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I-'HE POET IN 
THE DESERT 

BY CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT WOOD 



PORTLAND^OREGON 
MCMXV 



COPYRIGHT BY CHARLES ERSKINE SCOTT ^3700D, 191S 






M -7 1915 






THE POET IN THE DESERT 

PROLOGUE 

POET: 
I have entered into the Desert, the place of desolation. 
The Desert confronts me haughtily and assails me with 

solitude. 
She sits on a throne of light, 

Her hands clasped, her eyes solemnly questioning. 
I have come into the lean and stricken land 
Which fears not God, that I may meet my soul 
Face to face, naked as the Desert is naked ; 
Bare as the great silence is bare : 

I will question the Silent Ones who have gone before and 

are forgotten, 
And the great host which shall come after. 
By whom I also shall be forgot. 
As the Desert is defiant unto all gods. 
So am I defiant of all gods. 

Shadows of Man cast upon the fogs of his ignorance. 
As a helpless child follows the hand of its mother. 
So I put my hand into the hand of the Eternal. 

I have come to lose myself in the wide immensity and 

know my littleness. 
I have come to lie in the lap of my mother and be 

comforted. 
I am alone but not alone — I am with myself. 
My soul is my companion above all companions. 

Behold the signs of the Desert : 
A buzzard, afloat on airy seas, 

Alone, between the two immensities, as I am alone 
between two immensities ; 



A juniper-tree on a rocky hillside ; 

A dark signal from afar off, where the weary may rest in 

the shade ; 
A monastery for the flocks of little birds which by night 

hurry across the Desert and hide in the heat of the day ; 
A basaltic-cliff, embroidered with lichens and illuminated 

by the sun, orange and yellow, 
The work of a great painter, careless in the splash of his 

brush. 
In its shadow lie timid antelope, which flit through the 

sage-brush and are gone ; 
But easily they become fearless unto love. 
The sea of sage-brush, breaking against the purple hills 

far away. 
And the white alkali-flats which shimmer in the mirage 

as beautiful blue lakes, constantly retreating. 
The mirage paints upon the sky, rivers with cool, willowy 

banks ; 
You can almost hear the lapping of the water. 
But they flee mockingly, leaving the thirsty to perish. 
I lie down upon the warm sand of the Desert and it seems 

to me Life has its mirages, also. 
I sift the sand through my fingers. 

Behold the signs of the Desert : 

The stagnant water-hole, trampled with hoofs; 

About it shine the white bones of those who came too 

late. 
The whirling dust-pillar, waltz of Wind and Earth, 
The dust carried up to the sky in the hot, furious arms of 

the wind, as I also am lifted up. 
The glistening black wall of obsidian, where the wild 

tribes came to fashion their arrows, knives, spearheads. 
The ground is strewn with the fragments, just as they 

dropped them, the strokes of the maker undimmed 

through the desperate years. 
But the hunters have gone forever. 



The Desert cares no more for the death of the tribes than 

for the death of the armies of black crawling crickets. 
Silence. Invincible. Impregnable. Compelling the soul 

to stand forth to be questioned. 
Dazzling in the sun, whiter than snow, I see the bones 
Of those who have existed as I now exist. The bones are 

here; where are they who lived? 
Like a thin veil, I see a crowd of gnats, buzzing their 

hour. 
I know that they are my brethren, I am less than the 

shadow of this rock, 
For the shadow returneth forever. 
Night overwhelms me. The coyotes bark to the stars. 
Upon the warm midnight sand I lie thoughtfully sifting 

the earth through my fingers. I am that dust. 
I look up unto the stars, knowing that to them my life is 

not more valuable than that of the flowers ; 
The little, delicate flowers of the Desert, 
Which, like a breath, catch at the hem of Spring and are 

gone. 

I have come into the Desert because my soul is athirst as 

the Desert is athirst; 
My soul which is the soul of all ; universal ; not different. 
We are athirst for the waters which make beautiful the 

path 
And entice the grass, the willows and poplars. 
So that in the heat of the day we may lie in a cool shadow, 
Soothed as by the hands of quiet women, listening to the 

discourse of running waters as the voices of women, 

exchanging the confidences of love. 
The little rivers run away from the rugged Titans who 

are wrapped in cloaks of azure. 
They steal out from the mountains into the bosom of the 

Desert ; 
And the willows follow after them, waving their hands, 

calling that they run not so fast away. 



The river builds a safe fortress where the birds hide and 

the antelopes come for shelter. 
The carpet is a weaving of sweet grasses ; 
But at last the impatient life-givers marry 
The marshes which in the Springtime are green with 

tule-rush and in Autumn copper-red; 
Vast sanctuaries for the herons, ducks, pelicans and 

plover. 
Here breed the stately cranes which in the fading year 

mount high to the cloudless heavens and circle about 

calling for the Southland. 
Who is their monitor? Who is their pilot? 

The mountains afar girdle the Desert as a zone of 

amethyst ; 
Pale, translucent walls of opal, 
Girdling the Desert as Life is girt by Eternity, 
They lift their heads high above our tribulation 
Into the azure vault of Time; 
Theirs are the airy castles which are set upon foundations 

of sapphire. 
My soul goes out to them as the bird to her secret nest. 
They are the abode of peace. The vexed soul's brooding 

place. 
Behind them, Creation slumbers, a naked god ; 
His head pillowed on a rock, molten in the fires of chaos ; 
He dreams of gods to come. 
Who shall awake him? 
Shall the flowers awake him with their tender fingers, or 

with the fairy music of their tremulous bells? 
Larkspur and blue-bells, lupins, spikes of lapislazuli ; 
Wild sweet-william, pink as Aurora's bed? 
Sunflowers which on rocky hillsides flaunt the banners of 

their conquest? 
And golden seas of rabbit-brush which roll to the sunset, 

commingling ? 

6 



The flowers bloom in the Desert joyously. 
They do not weary themselves with questioning ; 
They are careless whether they be seen, or praised. 
They blossom unto life perfectly and unto death perfectly, 

leaving nothing unsaid. 
They spread a voluptuous carpet for the feet of the Wind 
And to the frolic Breezes which overleap them, they 

whisper: 
"Stay a moment. Brother ; plunder us of our passion ; 
"Our day is short, but our beauty is eternal." 

Never have I found a place, or a season, without beauty. 
Neither the sea, where the white stallions champ their 

bits and rear against their bridles. 
Nor the Desert, bride of the Sun, which sits scornful, 

apart, 
Like an unwooed Princess, careless ; indifferent. 
She spreads her garments, wonderful beyond estimation. 
And embroiders continually her mantle. 
She is a queen, seated on a throne of gold 
In the Hall of Silence. 
She insists upon humility. 
She insists upon meditation. 
She insists that the soul be free. 
She requires an answer. 
She demands the final reply to thoughts which cannot be 

answered. 
She lights the Sun for a torch 
And sets up the great cliffs as sentinels ; 
The morning and the evening are curtains before her 

chambers. 
She displays the stars as her coronet. 
She is cruel and invites victims. 
Restlessly moving her wrists and ankles, 
Which are loaded with sapphires. 
Her brown breasts flash with opals. 
She slays those who fear her, 



But runs her hand lovingly over the brow of those who 

know her, 
Soothing with a voluptuous caress. 
She is a courtesan, wearing jewels. 
Enticing, smiling a bold smile ; 
Adjusting her brilliant raiment negligently, 
Lying brooding upon her floor which is richly carpeted ; 
Her brown thighs beautiful and naked. 
She toys with the dazzlry of her diadems, 
Smiling inscrutably. 

She is a nun, withdrawing behind her veil; 
Gray, subdued, silent, mysterious, meditative ; 

unapproachable. 
She is fair as a goddess sitting beneath a flowering peach- 
tree, beside a clear river. 
Her body is tawny with the eagerness of the Sun 
And her eyes are like pools which shine in deep canyons. 
She is beautiful as a swart woman, with opals at her 

throat. 
Rubies on her wrists and topaz about her ankles. 
Her breasts are like the evening and the day stars ; 
She sits upon her throne of light, proud and silent, 

indifferent to her wooers. 
The Sun is her servitor, the Stars are her attendants ; 

running before her. 
She sings a song unto her own ears, solitary, but it is 

sufficient. 
It is the song of her being. O if I may sing the song of 

my being it will be sufficient. 
She is like a jeweled dancer, dancing upon a pavement of 

gold; 
Dazzling, so that the eyes must be shaded. 
She wears the stars upon her bosom and braids her hair 

with the constellations. 

I know the Desert is beautiful, for I have lain in her arms 

and she has kissed me. 
I have come to her, that I may know Freedom; 

8 



That I may lie upon the breast of the Mother and breathe 

the air of primal conditions. 
I have come out from the haunts of men ; 
From the struggle of wolves upon a carcass, 
To be melted in Creation's crucible and be made clean ; 
To know that the law of Nature is freedom. 

These are the signs of the Desert : 

Light, brilliant and blinding. 

Sky and earth ; the pale rim of mountains ; and here, by 

my feet, 
The skull of him that was. 
I will go out from the Desert while yet I am. 
I will cast off my fetters and even in rags 
I will, like a street singer, sing my song. 
I will sing my song of meditation and defiance ; 
But even as I go I look back and see the Desert smiling 

scornfully. 
I hear her mocking whisper. 

Only Man has enforced his brother; 

Only Man has compelled servitude. 

Only Man has dwarfed his own godhood, cherished 

Poverty and exalted Ugliness. 
Only Man has defied Nature and set up the idols of his 

ignorance. 
He has denied Freedom and Beauty. 

I will not climb unto the Morning peaks and, like a lark, 
Shoot my exultant song down into the shadows where 

the millions drudge and the children are born unto 

Labor, 
But I will lie like a mourner upon the bare and barren 

bosom of the Great Mother. 
I will chant a dirge unto Civilization. 
I cannot sing a song of Beauty, for Man has put a scar 

upon her forehead and twisted her exquisite limbs. 



I cannot sing a song of Truth, for Man has never yet 

perceived the flashing of her eyes. 
I cannot sing a song of Justice, for Justice stands on a 

great height, scornful, like a thunder-cloud brooding on 

a dark mountain. 
I cannot sing a song of Freedom, for Freedom is beyond 

this present Night, like a distant star kissing the edge 

of the world. 
Poets have sung of Freedom, but never has Freedom 

pressed Man's pale lips. 
Poets have sung of Justice, but Justice has not dwelt in 

the haunts of men. 
Poets have sung of Beauty, but who has perceived her, 

or been folded to the resilient perfection of her bosom? 
Unless all rejoice in beauty, there is no beauty. 
A palace is not beautiful if it rest upon a sewer which 

defiles its pavements. 
The gilding gildeth not a charnel-house. 
Poets have sung of Truth, but who has been burned by 

the lightnings of his eyes, or swept by the rushing of 

his wings? 

I have come into the primal solitude to seek Truth ; 

To lie at ease upon the breast of my Mother, 

And to be athirst amid the primal conditions. 

Nothing will I sing of quaint conceit or purring softness. 

Wresting my thought unto a rhyming word, 

But I will sing a dirge unto Civilization. 

It is a brazen mirror wherein all is distorted ; 

A chattering of monkeys who are foolish proud 

Because they have put on clothes. 

They imitate each other in the follies of their ignorance ; 

And all is falsity. They mould all to a false pattern. 

The blind correcting the blind. 

The more ignorant compelling the less ignorant. 

The dumb sheep ordered not with a shepherd's crook, but 

with a sword ; 
The souls of the Rare Ones ruled by the drooling Many, 

lO 



Or the souls of the hungry hordes ruled by their 

Oppressors. 
Neither the freedom of the primal struggle, 
Nor the freedom of the ultimate peace. 
Society, a hoofed monster, trampling to death the race. 
Truth, dweller in the starry places, 
More elusive than moonlight upon the sea, tremulous. 
Let me behold your brow which is vague as night, infinite. 
Let me look into your eyes which are deeper than the 

skies of this Desert. 

Where are you. Truth, where are you? 

Shadowy, appearing, disappearing, ever retreating. 

As the mirage of the Desert which lures to the glittering 

Death-spaces ; always advancing, never overtaken. 

Your smile is serene as death. 

And your hand is comforting. 

Where are you, Truth, where are you? 

The Desert is empty, vague, vast and terrifying ; 

Its stillness is as the spaces between the stars. 

So that I hear the murmur of my own heart and am afraid. 

I look up to the sky, which is eternal, 

And down to the hot sand, which is eternal, 

And I am afraid of my littleness. 

I know the brevity of my existence. 

Which is like the passing of the shadow of a cloud. 

I salute the little mottled lizard which intently watches me; 

I salute you. Brother ; 

Yet I know I am greater than you ; greater than all else. 

I am to myself greater than the Desert, or the world. 

Or the curiously peering stars. 

I feel that I am, in a mysterious way, 

Part of Time ; part of Eternity. 

When I have saluted Death and taken him by the hand, 

I shall be absolved and know no more ; 

Even as these white skulls and ribs know no more. 

Nevertheless, I am now a part of Time and I shall then be 

II 



As fully as the sun or the stars. 
Indestructibly a part of Eternity. 

Where are you, Truth, where are you? 

The Desert is pitiless. 

I am frightened of its bigness and its indifference. 

I am alone, an atom thrown out from Eternity, 

Allotted to do my part. 

I will do my part, and it shall be my own. 

I refuse to be moulded in the common mould, 

None different from another. 

I refuse to step regularly according to custom ; 

To measure myself among the monotonous patterns laid 

out before me. 
I will be myself and obey the voice within me 
Which impetuously cries to be free ; 
To wander imperiously, destroying the paths, 
The moulds and the patterns. 
O Truth discover yourself unto me. 

[£h/er Truth, <a»//A shining loingsJ] 
TRUTH: 
Ask, and I will answer. 



I. 

POET: 
Your face is pale, like the earliest dawn, before the birds 

have awakened. 
Your feet are like lilies by the rim of a pool. 
And your wings the mist of a cataract wherein the sun 

plays. 
Making a delicate glory ; fleeting ; iridescent. 
Your face is calm, the abiding-place of Sorrow. 

TRUTH: 
I am Truth, the sword-bearer ; 
Never to be possessed by Man. 

12 



POET: 
Of my heart, I desire you. 

TRUTH: 
Let me touch your eyes. 

POET: 
I see a dark cloud covering the earth, 
Eating up the sunlight of the world. 
I hear a distant thunder. 
At which my flesh shudders. 

TRUTH: 
The groans of the poor. 

POET: 
I see a monster. 

His feet are of gold ; his hands are of gold ; 
Golden is his head ; his legs are golden ; 
But his heart is of clay. 
His eyes are red as rubies, 
And his golden hands are folded upon his swollen belly, 

which is of gold ; 
Into his open maw flows an endless procession: 
Men with gray faces ; women with sunken eyes, 
And the little children who have never laughed. 

TRUTH: 
Moloch insatiable! 

POET: 
He sits upon a crimson pedestal. 

TRUTH: 
The blood of men. 

POET: 
It rests upon a great darkness. 

TRUTH: 
The Soul of Man. 

13 



POET: 
He is hideous black against the world. 
He sits within a dark temple ; 
And squatting upon the roof is a vulture 
Whose wings touch the horizon. 

TRUTH: 
Civilization! 

POET: 
The idolaters crowd into the Temple. 
They circle about the pedestal, praying. 
Their prayer is loud, so that it blows into the street 
And, like the dust, is whirled into every comer : 
"Oh, God of Gold, let nothing be changed. 
"Thou art our only God. 
"Thou hast decreed the Things that Are which must not 

be changed. 
"Thou hast ordered all things perfectly ; 
"We thank thee, God of Gold, for the perfection of thy 

ordering. Let nothing be changed; 
"We are comfortable. 
"Let the wicked, who seek to change the Things that Are, 

be crucified ; 
"Anarchists ! 

TRUTH: 
World-old lie ! 

Up from primeval slime till now 
The soul of Man has slowly crept. 
Shall this then be the end? 

POET: 
Is not Man of Nature, too? 

TRUTH: 
Her child, whom she so loveth that if he heeds not her 

voice 
She will lay him in his grave, as a loving mother her child 

in the cradle. 

14 



She makes no laws ; she utters no commands ; 

Only she establishes her eternal conditions. The Thun- 
ders and the Waters, Night and Day; Health and 
Death; the inevitable Seasons praise her. 

Her ultimate condition is freedom. 

By freedom, she has created Man's wondrous body, 

And shall create his wondrous soul. 

Continually, without pause, he has urged toward his soul. 

Noble is the struggle and great the hope. 

His soul, the soul of Nature and he its nursery. 

The best to live ; the worse to die. 

Not worms and butterflies, but butterflies from worms ; 

Body and soul, one ultimate progression. 

The hunger of the body to be fed, and the hunger of the 
soul to be fed. 

Food, the mother of the body and Leisure, the mother of 
the soul. 

POET: 
The air is thick with tired eyes which look hungrily 
toward me. 

TRUTH: 
The eyes of the poor ; disinherited before they were born. 
Who has right to partition out the sea, fence the invisible 

air, 
Or claim monopoly in the benediction of the rain? 
Is the solid earth less the general and maternal gift than 

these? 
A monster devours you. 

POET: 
Where is this monster? 

TRUTH: 
Within yon azure vault ; upon the moving air ; 
In Earth's deepest heart ; 
In the brooding alcoves of the Forest 
Whose columns are rooted on the breast of Time ; 
Upon the wide, rebellious sea. 

15 



It is hatched in a dragon's nest, thick with bones. 
It is the mother of Poverty ; the breeder of all crime. 

POET: 
Where is this devourer of the world? 

TRUTH: 
It blows its fetid breath against the Soul ; 
It hatches war and with its filthy talons rends the just. 
It snatches men out of the healing air, 
Away from the cool waters, 
And denies to them the blessed breast of the Mother, 

except for a grave. 
It hates the voice of Nature and fashions the sword. 

POET: 
Oh, that I had a sword of the gods to set men free ! 

TRUTH: 
You are the deliverer. 

POET: 
Where is this monster? 

TRUTH: 
The people are dumb before it and stretch out their 
throats for its teeth. 

POET: 
Show me this harpy of the world. 

TRUTH: 
The State ! Force ! Authority ! 
Hater of freedom ; oppressor of the poor ; creator of 

poverty ; 
Foster-mother of crime. 
The unsated monster which devours 
The men with despairful eyes; the women with tired 

faces, 
And the little children whose fingers are so soft; 

i6 



Rose-petals, delicately pink. 

It feeds upon babes, blinking innocently e'er they have 

waked to the morning. 
It gluts upon the breasts of mothers, which are so white. 
And upon the hearts of resolute men, which are so red. 
Its wings are death ; its eyes are graves ; 
Destroyer of the Soul. 

POET: 
And if the State should die, whore of Force and prostitute 
of Privilege? 

TRUTH: 
Then peace in freedom, and in freedom, peace. 
The law of Self made beautiful. 
Man shaking out his plumes unto the sun. 
Poets whose songs shall hold the ages listening ; 
Painters of visions, 

Sculptors of gods, for men shall be as gods 
In temples of grandeur; 

Where happily the people shall worship Beauty. 
Brotherhood shall be one with selfishness, 
Gone war; gone violence; gone brutal brows; 
Gone poverty, oppression, crime and degradation. 
Across the earth shall gleam Freedom, 
As welcome unto men of weary soul as waking of a 

summer day 
Unto the dawn-mad anarchy of birds. 

POET: 
But see the earth stretches black, a putrid swamp. 
Whence waves continually a forest of thin reeds. ^ 

TRUTH: 
The arms of the drowning Poor, reaching up for life. 

POET: 
Why, even birds do sing and lambs do laugh. 

17 



TRUTH: 
But not the children of the Poor. 

POET: 
The black-gowned men delicately fold their hands 
And groan through the nose, "The will of God." 

TRUTH: 
The long and backward path is marked with martyred 

skulls 
For which the black-robed men have said "The will of 

God." 
Man makes his God and thinks his God makes him. 
There is no God but Nature, no hell but of man's making. 

POET: 
I know not my beginning, neither whence nor whither ; 
But I perceive my own littleness and my own greatness ; 
I am one with the mole, blind beneath the grass, 
And I am one, also, with the limitless skies ; 
I am not only myself, but I am child of the generations. 
And father unto those to come. 

TRUTH: 
Who is not father to the children? 
Who is not brother unto all who live? 

POET: 
Murderers, thieves and prostitutes. 
All you criminals, 

You are my brothers and my sisters. 
I have consented to the conditions which lay with you in 

your mother's womb. 
Before you were bom, I prepared you for 
The brothel and the gallows; 
And I have prepared them for you. 
My little children, Oh, my little children ; 
You are mine as much as you are your father's, and more ; 

i8 



Yea, more beyond the count of suns. 

I will not desert you. 

Though I could weigh the soul and balance it 

And know the very beginning of Life and ending of Death, 

I would not desert you. 

My little helpless children, 

It is not right that you be born to die 

Before you have lived. 

I will not make a song of balmy Spring, 

Which lifts so shyly her veil, 

Jeweled and odorous ; 

Nor will I sing of voluptuous Summer, 

Charming with her vague discourse when the birds have 

sunk into silence, 
Nor celebrate the beauty of bough-bending Autumn, 
Rich caparisoned, whirling the painted leaves about, 
Like a strong youth at play ; nor honest Winter, 
The mimicry to man of immaculate Death. 
I will not tell of the great playground. 
While you, my little children, know it not 
But look continually downward into a grave. 

I will sing a psalm of affliction and of tears. 

I will sing a dirge of darkest night 

When the stars hide their faces before the thunder. 

I will chant a paean of vengeance and of deluge. 

Against the sky, I see Justice 

On a skyey crag, holding his sword, motionless, point 

down ; 
Not yet uplifted. 
Here in the wilderness, in the lonely abode of meditation 

and unannoyed of men. 
Let me speak so men must listen ; 
Those who buzz this little hour, and those to come. 

TRUTH: 
Speak, Poet. 
They will listen. 

19 



POET: 
I see a great fen, which, beloved Mother, you have not 

made. 
It spreads upon the darkened earth like a foul blot. 
Here and there flowers arise slowly upon it and bloom 

for a moment. 
Then sink back into rottenness. 
I hear a long, low moan, which bubbles from the great 

Morass. 
I see that its blackness covers the face of the earth. 
Above it, towering on a dizzy crag, eternal Justice stands. 
Holding in one hand a torch and in the other a bright 

sword, point down. 
His face is calm as the mountains. 

But I tremble at his voice saying slowly, without anger: 
"Man ! Man ! This fetid fen is all your deed. 
"You have put a blight upon the earth. 
"It is nothing that you have touched the sky with your 

towers of Babylon, 
"Leveled the mountains, harnessed the cataracts 
"And put the ocean into bonds. 
"You have snatched joy from the lips of children ; 
"You have made the mothers unfit, hating motherhood ; 
"And the fathers unfit, cursing fatherhood. 
"Who has given unto you possession of your brother? 
"Or said to you, 'The earth is yours,' 
"To be preserved to you by force, and your brother shall 

become your tenant? 
"Who has declared the fruit of your brother's toil is yours, 
"And that you shall drain off his blood for your fatness? 
"What Power has set a few as governors above their 

brethren, 
"Or made a majority to be tyrants?" 

TRUTH: 
Greater than the building of great cities 
Is the building of the soul of Man. 

ao 



POET: 

I had rather taste the common lot and know myself a 

man, full-statured, 
Than live like a louse upon the backs of the Poor. 

TRUTH: 
Better a tent with Justice than a Palace with Wrong. 

POET: 
Oh, for clean-limbed, clean-souled men and women. 

TRUTH: 
The body perfectly evolved in the freedom of the back- 
ward aeons of all time. 
And the soul to be evolved perfectly 
In the freedom of the forward aeons. 

POET: 
Who can set a limit to Man's soul? 

TRUTH: 
Who can set bounds unto the sky? 
Stars beyond stars ; systems beyond systems. 
He who shall look upon the last sunset, 
May say he has known the soul of man. 

POET: 
The Idolaters run about like sheep before a rainstorm. 
Stirring up a great dust and continually bleating : 
"Let nothing be changed ; we are comfortable." 
With a confused clamor, as of wild geese which fly up 

suddenly 
From the salt lakes of the Desert, 
They cry out continually : 

"God of Gold, our righteousness is thy righteousness ; 
"We are good in our own sight ; 
"We are well-dressed ; we are respectable." 
Like the angry Sea which snarls upon the sands, 
They call: "Stone those who dare to be different; 

crucify the anarchists ; 
"To the gallows with the agitators." 

21 



TRUTH: 
Behold the gowned priests, the preachers. 
Somber is their garb, 
And their teaching is somber. 
In their ignorance they preach love with their lips and 

rejoice in force in their hearts ; they think their will is 

the will of God, and by law they would change the 

foundations of the earth. 
Their eyes raised to heaven, see nothing ; 
And their mouths are filled with noise. 
They are a flock of crows which tear up the sprouting 

corn 
Before it reaches the light, 
And suck the egg before it has wings. 

POET: 
They affect a garb of Darkness, 
And their souls are clouded in night. 

TRUTH: 
Each sees his narrow shadow, and thinks it is God. 
But is blind to the handwriting of the buds, 
The teaching of the little calves ; 
Deaf to the instruction of the birds. 
And hears not the sermons of the Seasons. 
They refuse to drink from Nature's cup ; 
But are swollen in their own conceit. 
So that they will not drink from the same chalice 
With the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. 

POET: 
In their ignorance, they cry "Agitators" against those 
Who stand upon the street-corners, saying : 
"Go to, now, ye rich men ; weep and howl, 
"For your miseries which shall come upon ye. 
"For your gold and silver is cankered, 
"Behold the hire of the laborers which have reaped down 

your fields, 
"Which is of you kept back by fraud crieth : 

22 



" 'Ye have condemned and killed the just.' 

"If a brother or sister be naked and destitute of daily food, 

"And one of ye say unto them : 

" 'Depart in peace ; be warmed and filled,' 

"Notwithstanding ye give them not those things 

"Which are needful to the body, 

"What doth it profit?" 

TRUTH: 
Though a Christ died daily, they would not understand 

him. 
They are slaves unto material things ; 
Worshippers of the things that were. 
Always eager to crucify the Masters of the Soul. 

POET: 
Beloved Nature, lay on your cool and benedictive hands ; 
Wrap me in your infinity, 
Bathe me in your eternal pools. 
Wash me clean of the turmoil, 
And draw into your bosom all my fever. 
Give into my hand the stars rising above this world. 
And from their invisible fountains shed on me the dews of 

Peace. 
Breathe Beauty as a cloud, surpassing all. 
You have made nothing sacred; 
And in your everlasting temples, none need kneel. 

TRUTH: 
Man has declared a sanctity in garments, 
But not in the flesh of babes. 

The Patriot must bare his head before a holy rag. 
But in its fluttering shadow his striving soul 
Is stricken down with clubs of Authority. 

POET: 
Holier to me than any flag, the tatters of her 
Who should be a full-bosomed mother. 
More eloquent to me than banners, 

23 



The pathetic rags of Labor. 

Why should I, who will soon drink the comfortable cup, 

Sing of Joy, or shower words like rose-petals 

Upon the toilers whose backs are bent? 

Shall I twitter a morning song, 

While millions lie cold in darkness? 

Or sing the rhapsodies of Love, 

While my sisters barter for bitter bread, or brittle 

pleasure. 
That sacred fire, more elder than the Sun, 
Lit in Eternity, purer than Purity, 
And sheltered by the old, dead gods? 

TRUTH: 
Sing of manhood. Poet, 
Of straight-lipped manhood, 
Which, wide-eyed, with uplifted brows. 
Fearless, grips the gods and cries : 
"Hail, comrades, I am your fellow." 

.^ '^■' k, 

IL \ 
POET: 
Nature, flawless, without error in her turning. 

TRUTH: 
What is Man, that he should oppose himself to her 

eternity. 
Or think to know her infinite perfection? Shall the child 

understand the mother? 
To one who stands upon the promontory of a star, 
Are not the ants and bees as precious? Their knowledge 

admirable? 
Nature is wonderful in the infinity of her largeness, 
And of her smallness; 

The clod of the field as mysterious as a star ; 
And a grain of dust as the mountains. 
Are not the grasses, the fruits, the vari-colored flowers, 

from the dust? 

24 



Continually expanding; 

Continually returning to the source. 

Man, not more nor less than the lowliest of these. 

The weeds have the benignant care of the Mother 

perfectly as the wide-spreading oaks and lofty firs. 
And the children of men not any more her solicitude than 

the babies of the beetle 
Which tenderly she feeds in their dark and earthy 

lodgings. 
She holds the suns lightly between her fingers, 
Yet delights in the infinite atoms which our eyes cannot 

see. 
She has established eternal conditions whose penalty is 

death, but leaves all free to seek life. 
She governs nothing ; commands nothing ; enforces 

nothing. 
How then shall the smallest soul be governed by another? 

POET: 
The ant-hill as dear to Nature as the vastest city. 

TRUTH: 
Yea, dearer, for the little folk know freedom. 
With them. Justice plays awhile. The curious architects, 
The ants, will yet build in the streets of the proudest city, 
If the city finds not freedom. 

POET: 
The peace of Life which is Justice has not yet come to 

men. 
But the peace of Death is insistent. 

TRUTH: 
Man considers only what his eyes see. 
Yet the things unseen destroy his body ; 
And the things unseen destroy his soul. 
He lives and dies upon a world he cannot see ; 
Yet he would control the soul of his brother. 

25 



POET: 

The laws of Man are futile. They are engines of Tyranny ; 
Encumbrances against Nature ; 
Meddling obstructions. 

TRUTH: 
They proclaim, "Ye shall," and "Ye shall not." And who 

dares say so? 
The Great Mother commands nothing ; prohibits nothing. 
Tender and pitiless, she permits all things. 
But the penalty of error is death. 

POET: 
As a little child winking in its cradle, 
I gaze up at the roof she has put over me ; 
I see it is frosted with the sparks of eternity. 
It is forever beyond my finger reach and beautiful beyond 

my comprehension, 
I do not seek to control it ; 
Yet I seek to control the soul of my brother, 
Which also is inaccessible, infinite, beyond my 

comprehension. 
I find no flaw in the marching of the worlds ; 
The unseen gathering of the crystal dew. 
Or the raging of the relentless sea. 
The glow-worms, which bear their lamps humbly. 
As perfect as the sky-flooding moon. 
The tempest which tears the rooted pillars of the world. 
Not different from the wanton winds 
Which negligently play their airy flutes unto the leaves. 
Yet I instruct my mother. 

I look upon the swift rivers which hurry 
From the breasts of the mountains. 
Rolling the boulders with dull noises 
And carrying the wreckage of Time 
Upon their foaming frontlets. 
Though they obliterate a city, 

26 



Shall that impeach their operations? 

Carvers of the eternal channels, 

Levelers of the hills, 

Jubilantly tossing sun-jewels in their hands ; 

Bearing poppy wreaths and chaplets of wheat to the 

goddesses aw^aiting in the meadows. 
Because sailors sink in the deep 
And throw up vain arms unto the void. 
Shall the moving battlements of the sea be fixed? 
Or the winds sleep forever? 
Because we lift our frightened hands 
Unto a mocking sky, shall the earth cease from her 

travail or the chariots of the stars be stayed? 
Continually Nature drapes her wrecks with beauty, 
And out of destruction brings new life, 
But the wrecks of Man are cherished by him. 
He preserves studiously his errors. 
Continually he renews disease. 
He will not hearken to the voice of his mother. 

TRUTH: 
He has weighed the stars. 
Caught the lightning in its course. 
Peered like a curious child into his own cradle. 
But never yet has he controlled the eternal conditions. 
These are beyond him forever, yet he will not recognize 

them. 
He will not swim with the benevolent current. 
But hobbles like a blind man 
After the fatal falsities of Nineveh and Babylon. 
He does not understand that though he may not control 

Nature's conditions. 
He may surrender himself to their harmony ; 
As the willow-leaf, in September, floats happily 
On the force of the river. 
Never has he understood Freedom, 
Nor dug to the root of Evil, 

27 



Or looked deep into that cave of chrysoprase where a 
golden cloud veils the altar and behind which is 
Himself. 

He is always arguing about those things which do not 
matter, 

And accepting deep festered fetters on his soul. 

POET: 
When I look upon the roof of Night, 
I marvel that there be one who cares for what another 

thinks, 
Or in the bigness of this universe there be a soul so 

small to 
Feel the sting of ignorant opinion ; the contemptible 

multitude. 
I know for every one, were he but bold, 
Surely along some starry path, his soul awaits him. 

TRUTH: 
You, too, are part of the cosmos 
And should sweep free in your orbit as the stars in theirs. 

,/ POET: 

The Desert terrifies me. 

I am penetrated by its awe, vast and solitary. 
Humbly I take my place with yon little lizard, 
As the child of Creation. 

Dimly, I begin to know that Nature has designed 
Freedom for every one, without exception; 
Each in the possession of his own soul, 
Under eternal conditions which envelop all 
As the air envelopes the Earth. 

TRUTH: 
Freedom is the air of the soul. 
To be uncontrolled is the life of the race. 

POET: 
Your thoughts penetrate me even as the insistent sap 
penetrates to the tips of the leaves, unfolding their 
tender fingers. 

28 



TRUTH: 
Man, dull brute, mistaking the thud of his feet for the 

rolling of the spheres, is willing the Great Mother 
Should go about her work freely in his poor body, 
Casting out the poisons which destroy him, 
But he is not willing she should freely 
Cast out the poisons of the greater body. 
Even the beasts accept the impenetrabilities of Nature, 
But Man has substituted an image of himself, 
Who for prayers and bribes pretends 
To modify those edicts which lift the fires of Creation, 
And guide the stars in their wandering ; 
Which weave the wings of the winds and shape the 

crystal orbs of the rain, 
Not caring if the fields have sinned ; 
Which nurse the silver spawn of the herring 
Amid the brown and undulant seaweed 
As tenderly as the spawn of Man. 

POET: 

Nature is simple ; yet inscrutable, eternally impregnable ; 

But her own insect would control her 

With the infirmity of his ignorance. 

The blind beetle seeks to order his brother's footsteps. 

TRUTH: 
Nature is like the stars, unvarying ; determined ; . 
She has set her conditions, equal unto all. 
She is merciless and full of mercy. 

POET: 
She claims no authority ; she invokes no force. 

TRUTH: 
She knows no rulers. 

POET: 

She seems deaf, but her deafness is wisdom. 

29 



TRUTH: 
She seems blind, but her blindness is vision. 

POET: 
She seems cruel, but her cruelty is mercy. 

TRUTH: 
Who breaks her conditions is his own executioner. 

POET: 
The merciful mother is merciful as a mother. 

TRUTH: 
She keepeth the race. 



III. 
POET: 

Behold, the silver-kirtled Dawn, 

The Life-renewer, sure Harvester of Gloom, 

And Bright Bringer of good hope. 

The skies are listening to Earth's silence 

And the Comforter casts abroad her gossamer mantle. 

The Desert sleeps, but her children, like fretful babies. 

Stir upon her bosom. 

TRUTH: 
The lean coyote, prowler of the night. 
Slips to his rocky fastnesses. 

Jack-rabbits noiselessly shuttle among the sage-brush. 
And from the castellated cliffs 

Rock-ravens launch their proud black sails upon the day. 
The wild horses troop back to their pastures. 

POET: 
The poplar-trees watch beside the irrigation-ditches. 
Orioles, whose nests sway in the cottonwood-trees by the 

ditch-side, begin to twitter. 
All shy things, breathless, watch 
The thin, white skirts of Dawn, 

30 



The dancer of the sky, 

Who trips daintily down the distant mountain-side 

Emptying her crystal chalice. 

TRUTH: 
And a red-bird, dipped in sunrise, cracks from a poplar's 

top 
His exultant whip above a silver world. 

POET: 
Yet are my eyes afflicted by the coming of the day. 
I see like a mirage of the desert an endless procession 

flowing from life unto death, 
Smileless, submissive; thin ghosts, starvation-carved. 
Life-marred, soul-stunted ; blurred unto death. 

TRUTH: 
The army of the God of Gold. 

POET: 
So pitiful-eager to snatch a crust that they may live ; 
To live, to work ; to work, to live. 

TRUTH: 
Civilization ! 

POET: 
In the life-renewing Morning, 

The stony dragons vomit their smoke into the face of God. 
The smoke of a hearth-stone is beautiful, 
But the smoke of furnaces, wherein are consumed 
The souls of men, is a blot against the luster of the day. 

TRUTH: 
Civilization ! 

POET: 
I hear the hungry roar of fiery furnaces ; 
The clang of hammers and the clank of chains ; 

31 



The clash and clamor of steel-plates ; 

The evil rattle of steel-cranes. 

I am deaf with the bellowing of monsters which feed on 

men. 
They belch their smoke against the resentful sky 
And below, in the steam, 
I see men naked, sweating like the damned ; 
Grimy alchemists, with wan, smutted faces. 
Who dully change dull iron to dull gold. 

TRUTH: 
Slaves to the demons which they guide. 

POET: 

An iron world without a soul; 

The patient sky above waiting ; 

The patient men below waiting ; 

The blue sky above forever listening, inviting, expectant ; 

The tired men below forever listening, hopeful, expectant ; 

The flaming sun above ordering abundance ; 

The flaming hell below denying enough ; 

Forever clamoring; forever devouring; 

Devouring the men who are mates for mothers; 

Fathers, steel-muscled, broad-chested, dominant ; 

The women, mothers of children ; 

The innocent children with white bodies, fluent, 

Morning glories bearing the 

Seeds of the unknowable Future. 

Mothers, undulant, flexible ; crypts of the ages ; alabaster 

vessels of life. 
In the dim dawn, before the whistles command, 
I see an army, ever hungry, never full ; 
They bend gray faces above their pauper bowls, 
And suck up eagerly Starvation's dole. 

TRUTH: 
Your brothers, whom you have disinherited; 
Your sisters, whom you have destroyed. 

3a 



POET: 

In the grim dawn, the miners swarm from their hovels, 
Lusterless faces, bent backs. 
And swinging in their hands, tin-buckets, 
Censers of the God of Gold. 

Their faces are patient, as the dog's before his master; 
Their faces which are blanched so pitiful 
That the grime upon them is dark, 
Like the tally-mark of Death. 
Into the galleries of doom 
They bear the little torches which are all 
The sun and moon their long life knows ; 
And in their souls they bear the little torches 
Which are all the light their dark life knows ; 
They go down into the dripping corridors. 
Into the dark womb of the Earth, their mother ; 
The mother who devours her children ; 
Nay, not the Earth, their mother, devours them, 
But they are devoured of men, their brethren ; 
They go down into the caverns of the Earth, 
And sitting on the shoulder of each. 
Crouching close at his ear, is Death. 
They rain gold into the laps of their owners 
Who bask in the sun and breathe the bright air 
Sifted by the leaves ; 

But unto these toilers is tossed only enough 
Of the spoil of their combat to keep Life's poor, gray 
smoke ascending. 

TRUTH: 
Revolution ! Revolution ! 

POET: 
I cannot hear the roll-call of the woodpecker, 
Drumming Pan and his little goat-mouthed satyrs 
From the forest to the orchard. 
I cannot hear the melancholy note of the cuckoo 
Hid in the oak-tree, which calls plaintively before the 
rain, 

33 



Nor the mournful cooing of the dove from the rocky 
hillside, 

Near the spring, which is bordered with cresses. 

I only hear the reverberation of the riveter, 

That iron woodpecker, which perches upon the steel- 
girders. 

High against the sky, with iron-bill 

Tapping, rattling, reverberant, deafening. 

I see men running about on beams and girders, 

Human spiders, weaving the iron-cobwebs of the sky- 
scrapers. 

I see them running about recklessly as if the air were 
their home. 

A sudden slip, a swift rush to Eternity, 

On the pavement, the blood trickling from his nostrils, 

A spider of the iron-web lies still. 

A coat blots out the sight. 

TRUTH: 
Nothing is ever blotted. 

Even the grass-roots remember when they have fed on 
blood. 

POET: 
Justice is blind. 

TRUTH: 
Justice, immortal, relentless, clear-visioned ; 
Red drop for drop, carefully insisting that the debt be 
paid. 

POET: 
There lies the accusing thing, 
Shouting its loud, dumb challenge to the sky. 

TRUTH: 
Dead for a wage so pitiful. 

34 



POET: 

)And fledglings in the nest, 
J Waiting with open mouths, 
\ Fining the vacant air with cries. 
I A clang of bells. An ambulance. 
! The thing is gone. 
tOh, where is God? 

TRUTH: 
Make better gods. 

POET: 

I see my white-faced sisters of the foul tenements 

Stooping over their needles, the devil's playthings, 

Which flash faster than the wings of the dragon-fly, 

Or the fangs of the quick-coiling serpent. 

Their fingers are yellow, like those of the dead ; 

The thin fingers of those who have died of hunger. 

Without pause, not daring to lose a moment. 

They snatch at the crust of their starvation while they 
labor. 

They bend close above their work with dim eyes. 

And the murmur of their hearts is continually: 

"Lest we starve ! Lest we starve !" 

I see my haggard sisters of the mind-madding factories. 

Their eyes sunken and their mouths drawn down. 

What anguish do they suffer? 

Their sallow hands are like talons; thin and yellow like 
the foot of an eagle. 
l They stand forever where the clamorous looms catch up 
J the souls of the workers and weave them into cloth, 
! The souls of submissive women, woven into cloth for 
\ the masters, 

And they left standing, empty husks. 

Oh, the din of the mind-madding looms. 

The devil-dance of the shuttles. 

They weave up Youth, Freshness, Joy. 

They weave up the morning-thread of children's lives ; 

The roses of maidens' cheeks, 

35 



The whiteness of the sacred breasts of mothers, 
Those pure ivory bowls of far Eternity, 
Which should be beautiful. 

TRUTH: 
Civilization. Moloch insatiable. 

^ POET: 

My little sisters, my pretty little sisters, 

With Life's morning in your cheeks ; 

Your eyes asparkle with the morning stars; 

Your bodies bathed in the wine unpurchasable. 

My girlish sisters, trusting, smiling, unafraid ; 

Chattering like children, flitting thoughtlessly, to the 

market 
Where you yourselves are merchandise; 
You sell bright ribbons and your brighter selves. 
I have seen innocent, pretty birds walk into the trap 

which shall destroy them. 
They twitter joyously, preening themselves, 
Glossy and beautiful; 
Turning their heads gracefully, 
Ere they pick up the corn which betrays them. 

TRUTH: 
The daughters of the Poor for sale. 
The Devil's auction. 

POET: 
Three dollars a week; three and a half; 
Four ; five ; five and a half. 

Gone ! Five dollars and a half a week for all the call of 
• the universe! 

Gone ! The thoughtless, trusting little birds. 
The innocent young mothers, sold at the Devil's auction. 
Eyes more precious than agates or sapphires. Shining 

like the pools of evening. 
Wherein the stars dance and along the border of which 

runs the liquid moon, 

36 



Cheeks more delicate than the wild-rose of the Desert- 
canyons ; 
Bosoms soft, white and fragrant as pond-lilies ; 
Lips dewy as Aurora new-bathed 
In the flattery of orient seas. 

TRUTH: 
Profit! Profit! Shall not the young mothers be slain 
for profit? 

POET: 
Souls leaning upon Hope 
With all the yearning of a woman's love. 

TRUTH: 
Profit! Profit! Shall not souls be sold for profit? 

POET: 

My little sisters, my trusting little sisters. 

Shall you not snatch at roses which droop heavy for the 

picking? 
Shall you not walk in the poppied paths? 
Shall you be an-hungered and not taste of the grapes? 
Has the vaunted God baited you only for destruction? 

TRUTH: 
Shirk not your work upon your pasteboard God. 

POET: 
Yea, I am guilty, for I have consented. 
Oh, the little children who should be the flowers of the 

Future, 
But their eyes are already weary and their lids droop 

toward oblivion. 
When I walk alone and look up into the sky 
I do not see the watchful orbs of night. 
But only the melancholy eyes of the Unborn 
Which stare at me, saying: 
"Must we, too, die not knowing Joy?" 

37 



When I hear the soughing of the winter wind in the 

leafless trees, 
It is the voices of little children without childhood; 
The sobbing of the brooks which quarrel to their stones 
Is to me the sobbing of mothers who curse motherhood ; 
The hissing of the imperious ocean 
Is to me the savagery of men who hate manhood. 
And the roar of the tempest is the fury of those 
Who will some day shake their fists against God. 

TRUTH: 
Bellied God! 
Moloch insatiable. 

POET: 
Everywhere, thicker than the stars of Heaven, 
I see melancholy eyes which stare at me ; 
Everywhere, like hissing rain, 
I hear the hot, salt rain of women's tears 
Which make the earth more salt and barren than this 

desert. 
Nature's desert is clean, and the bones of the dead 
Shine in the sun, white as pearls; 
But the desert of Man is filled with dead men's bones 
Rotting in darkness. 

TRUTH: 
Revolution ! Revolution ! 

POET: 
Everywhere I hear the hesitating footsteps of the wind 
Which brings unto my ears the moans of the Poor. 
More melancholy than the wail of the curlew upon the 

waste 
Is the cry of the disinherited : 
Those who were disinherited before they were bom. 

TRUTH: 
Before the day of their birth 
They are outcasts in the home of their Mother. 

38 



POET: 
Even the silent stars whisper unto me, 
"Thou art consenting." 
The waters and the many-tongued leaves 
Call continually to me, "How long? How long? 
"How long, brother, ere you come?" 
Out of the shadows an army of ghosts beckon to me, 
With twisted limbs and distorted mouths. 
"How long, brother, ere you come?" 

TRUTH: 
Will you come, or will you deny your divine vocation? 

POET: 
I will come, oh my brothers and sisters ; 
I will come. 



IV. 

POET: 
Hark to the laughers. 

Here, where Silence has sat down with covered head, 
I am pursued by mocking laughter. 

TRUTH: 
Your weak and helpless sisters 
Whom the Holy Ones have cast out. 

POET: 
I, too, have cast them out. 
I have consented. 
Oh, my sisters, fountains of Life, 
Wondrous weavers of the soul ; 
Lamps of the Future and mysterious moulds 
Of the generations. 

You are the torch-bearers who, in infinite procession, 
Approach from the sunrise. 
And in infinite procession diminish afar, into the sunset. 

39 



TRUTH: 
Man's falsities have made the lips of beautiful women 
Poisonous, as the bite of a seq)ent. 

POET: 

My sisters, so madly merry; 

With lamps you have blotted out the stars. 

You have made the cool, kind night to shiver with your 

laughter ; 
Your mad and reckless laughter; 
Your mad and reckless songs. 
See, against your windows and against the night, 
The stars showing through his skull, 
Stands Death. 

He too is fiddling, singing, laughing. 
His laughter is madness and he sings his own relentless 

song. 
Can you not hear it, my sisters, higher than your own? 
He sings the death of your souls, 
And not yours only, but mine; 
For we are one. 

I cannot separate myself from you, nor you from me. 
In the endless Past, we were one ; 
And in the endless Future, we are one. 
You too, should be the Mothers of the Race ; 
You are the absolute moulds of the Future. 

There is one waiting for you, my helpless sisters, 

Just around the corner. 

His lean fingers are playing with a shroud, 

And on his grinning head he wears a withered wreath. 

They call you Daughters of Joy, 

But on your pillow, no matter who else lies there, 

Lies a dread head with cavernous eyes. 

A sharp sword is in your bed, 

The sword of the Fleshless One, the Reaper. 

He reaps not your death alone, but mine; 

40 



Not my death, nor yours only ; 
He reaps the death of the Race. 

TRUTH: 
The falsities of Man are poisoning the River of Life 
Under the Cliffs of Eternity. 

POET: 
Shall I sing of the Morning 
While the daughters of the day are sick? 
Shall I celebrate the defeat of Night 
While these hide before the pageant of Day? 
I cannot sing of the Morning 

While the daughters of the day shut out the light. 
I cannot sing of Love 
While the keepers of Love's house 
Sell Love upon the street. 

TRUTH: 
Nay, Love is unsaleable, omnipotent. 

None can control him. He is his own master. Going 
and coming as he please. 

POET: 
Shall I say, "Behold the torch of Day has lit the Earth." 
When they who hold the torch of Life are set to illumine 

Hell? 
Shall I delight in the limitless arch. 
Which is divinely hung with worlds, 
When the mothers of worlds, divine as stars, blaspheme 

the Night? 

TRUTH: 
Night, kind nurse to weariness. 
Which delicately draws her draperies about us 
With caressing fingers, and drops from her pitying lips 
Kisses for those who weep. 
The cool, caressing night; 
Large, absorbing ; sheltering and benignant ; 

41 



Mercifully enfolding the nakedness of the world 
With a translucent garment. 

POET: 
The great spaces are opened up 
And the largeness of Creation penetrates us. 
Night, tenderly secretive, soothing; 
Sending up mists like veils ; 
Making the groves secret and sacred ; 
Shrouding all things; 

Filling the void with vaporous masses, vague, uncertain ; 
Infiltrating the inner chambers of the mind with wonder 
And leading out our thoughts to mystery. 
Even as we strip from our bodies the clothes of the day. 
So we strip from our minds the confusion of our turmoil, 
And stand soul-naked, learning pride in ourselves. 
Oh, all-embracing night, wherein I may loose my soul. 
Watchful and hovering, comforting and merciful ; 
Great bowl of purity, cool, purifying stream 
Endlessly flowing between the days. 

TRUTH: 
What do the toilers know of the beauty of Night 
Or the dazzlery of lamps in the sky? 
What do they know of the blaze of the lower firmament 

which they themselves have created, afloat upon the 

darkness ; 
Caught, too, in waiving, liquid distortions in the rivers? 

POET: 
What do the laborers know of the watchful trees 
Which by night seem to sleep, but are sentinels for lovers, 
Beckoning them to quiet cloisters, 
And breathing on them balsam and leafy odors? 
Do those who wrest all from the reluctant Mother 
Know the kindness and beauty of the Mother? 
Do they thrill with the cry of the night-birds, 

42 



The evening serenade of frogs, or the plaintive shrilling 
Of the Autumn insects which under the moon sing the 
dirge of Summer? 

TRUTH: 
To the Poor night is welcome, not for its infinite beauty. 
But because, like death, it brings forgetfulness and an end 
to labor. 



V. 

TRUTH: 
Birth is pure and Death is pure. 
Was ever a baby born wicked. 
Or a child begotten impure? 

POET: 

Oh, my sisters, once you were babies ; 

Once you were little mothers unto dolls. 

Longing to be loved. 

Do you remember the call, insistent, 

Which you did not understand. 

Even as the willows feel the persuasive incantation of 

Spring, 
Which they do not understand? 
Nevertheless, they become proud with silver studs, 
And hang out the golden tassels of their fruitfulness, 
Shaking the pollen, inviting the bees. 
Oh, my sisters, you have come down to us 
Out of the Unknown, as the pure white wind-flowers 
Come up out of the dark earth in the silence of the forest. 
The ages have delivered you to us white with purity. 
But men have violated your beautiful bodies 
And sullied your unguessed souls. 

Nature would not suffer you to sell your beautiful bodies ; 
Nor to soil your spirit invisible ; 
But Man requires it 
Even while he preaches holiness. 

43 



TRUTH: 
Like the stars, certain in their appointments, 
So is Retribution. It will come in its circle. 

POET: 
You have been used and despised; 
Despised and used. 

The sacramental-vessels have been used as an ewer 
For the washing of hands. 
The love-flame has been used as a lamp to light a sordid 

house. 
Do the men who use you say, "You are the altars of Life, 
"Whom we will approach only at the call of the Master 
"And upon whom we will worship reverently"? 
No, they spill the wine and pollute the altar. 
When they have used you, they spit upon you in their 

morality. 
They push you out into the street, 
Closing the gates upon you. 
Sealed by the Infinite unto love and trust, 
By love and trust you have been betrayed. 
You are beloved of the gods, but despised of men. 
You have been moulded by Nature perfectly. 
But Man has broken the statue which stands in the 

portico of the temple. 

TRUTH: 
Nature has named Love holy, 

But Man has named his mumbled Marriage holier than 
Love. 

POET: 
Is eternal Nature right, or man? 

TRUTH: 
The crawling creature, or the infinite Creator? 

POET: 
In the forgiving moonlight, on the slab 
Of the silent and deserted morgue, 
A woman lies, more whiter than the moon. 

44 



TRUTH: 
Has Love turned murderer? 
Priests, whore-mongers, government. 
You are all hucksters of a woman's soul, 
Compellers of defilement. 

POET: 
Who puts a blot upon our sister? 

TRUTH: 
Society, a pack of wolves tearing the flesh of a doc, 
Trembling ; submissive ; helpless. 
She were not shamed unless you shamed her. 

POET: 
The beasts of the field have purer knowledge. 
Motherhood for love is sufficient. 

TRUTH: 
Does a god sell his god-head? 
Or the fisherman cast back the pearl which he has drawn 

from the deep? 
Shall the keepers of Life willingly deliver Life unto 

Death? 

POET: 
Is it you, my sisters, who are poisoners of the blood. 
Or they who make of Nature's love a spotted thing ? 
Have the keepers of the blood, that wondrous juice 
Which has crept from out the farthest rift of Time, 
Chosen to pollute the blood? 
Have the mothers of children chosen to destroy the child? 

TRUTH: 
How beautiful it is to see the bitch huddle her blind 

puppies ; 
The cow lick her trembling calf with adoration. 
Must we not marvel that the shy doe will return 
To her death at the bleat of her fawn? 

45 



POET: 
And Man compels mysterious motherhood to the morgue, 
And mother-joy to the abortion-chamber. 

TRUTH: 
You are all hypocrites, worshipping a lie ; 
Cowards, stealing along a crooked path ; 
Preferring stale incense 
To the breath of the morning. 

POET: 
And I am consenting. 

TRUTH: 
Whoever consents is guilty. 

POET: 
I will be brave. 
I will be willing to die. 

TRUTH: 
Not one must be brave, but many. 

POET: 

I have degraded the mothers and denied life to the 
children. 

TRUTH: 
If one be degraded, all are degraded. 

POET: 
I have consented to a lie. 

TRUTH: 
If but only one perish by a lie, 
Either the lie must perish or all will perish. s^ 



VI. V 






TRUTH: 
Love, master of all, god of gods, 
Creator of creation, 
Invisible, invincible, eternal. 



46 



fi'iX- 



Mysterious mechanic ; 

Gardener of the world, 

Creator of the soul ; 

Master of the universe, 

Riding upon the stars as steeds ; 

Irresistible as the whirling of the sun ; 

Eternal as the pilgrimage of Day into Night ; 

Moulder of manhood and maker of man. 

Man is subject unto Love, not Love unto Man. 

Shall this spotted lizard of the Desert 

Chain the procession of the stars? 

Man has dared to say 

That Love shall not be free. 

The winds not free? 

The tides of ocean chained and mastered? 

The mighty rivers tamed and turned to flow 

Back to their inaudible beginnings? 

The sun, the moon, the stars, to dance as puppets on a 

string 
When Man grimaces in his little book of laws and wags 

his finger? 
When was Love not free? Who stayed his coming or his 

going? 
Who caught or bound him. Master of Life? 
Who commanded or delivered the Supreme Sovereign? 
Man may squint at the stars; dance before his own 

shadow ; 
Cherish his ignorance and bow down before his puppets. 
But he cannot control Love, Creator of all, the Beginning 

and the End. 

POET: 
Shall Man, with his crooked fingers, 
Like a child upon the beach. 

Build a sand-rampart to hold the furious surges of the 
sea? 

47 



TRUTH: 
By the great Original 
Who stirred the primal slime, 

It is as if a mincing monkey passed through a garden, 
And with a dirty finger touched lilies and roses. 
Smirking, "This shall be moral; this immoral; 
"This pure ; this impure." 

POET: 
The gods should choke with laughter. 

TRUTH: 
You have put shackles on your souls, but not on Love. 

POET: 
Can there be gods and Love not free? 
Oh, when will the day come? 

TRUTH: 
Surely it will appear; 

But the clock of the heavens is set for Eternity. 
Man's trail is upward 
From the first ocean whisper until now. 
He flew not with wings, 
But slowly as a snail, 
Zigzagged upward on the cliff of Ages ; 
Reaching, trying, feebly feeling, 
Yet wandering upward, 
The infinite Ages but a point 
On a line from Eternity to Infinity. 

POET: 
But now he will put on expanding wings ; 
As from the worm the glorious butterfly ; 
And who shall guess his flight? 

TRUTH: 
Only Freedom shall plume his flight. 

48 



POET: 
The grovelling idolaters of the Bellied God cry : 
"Let nothing be changed. 
"The things which are, are sacred." 

TRUTH: 
Nothing is sacred. 
Man least of all. 

Change is the breathing of the universe. 
Had nothing been changed, 
Man were now a worm within the slime ; 
A brute within a bloody cave. 
Sacredness is Nature's scorn ; 
Idolatry her contempt ; 
A bandage to the visioned seer; 
A pitfall to the eager feet of the runner ; 
Black pitch clogging the wings of eagles. 
Nature welcomes the sacrilege of her children. 
She is a common book, open to the blunderer, 
Setting him straight ; 
Prodigal and patient with the persistent ; 
Cold to those who will not invade her. 
To become sacred is to end 
And Nature is without end. 

POET: 
I will be my own moralist and Nature shall lead me. 
I will follow her like a little child 
Who stumbles, holding the hand of its mother. 

TRUTH: 
While ye have rulers there can be neither peace nor 
freedom. 

POET: 
I will open the gates unto Love. 
His wings shall cover the world. 
He shall wander through the fields, 

49 



Gathering violets and dandelions, unhindered, 

As the little children gather dandelions with laughter 

And braid corn-flowers into crowns ; 

As the maidens gather roses, which because of their sweet 

odor 
They place in their bosoms. 
Leaving blood upon the thorns. 

TRUTH: 
So Love shall wander in the garden, utterly unhindered ; 
Choosing freely and discarding freely. 

POET: 
Oh, Truth, I am sick of heart and cannot sing. 
Shall I sing of Liberty when there is no Liberty? 
Shall I sing of Freedom when there is none? 
Shall I sing love-songs to young lovers who are slaves? 
My soul thrills even as I think the laburnum 
In Spring-time thrills to Hnk her chains of gold. 
I am lost in the great miracle which Nature 
Has endlessly wrought out of freedom. 
But Man sits amid his own ruins, eating husks. 
Do the slavish ones perceive the mysterious cycles, 
Or the coming of new leaves? 
Do they know that life may be glad for all 
And love glad for all? 
For them the Earth is only a grave. 
Do the men and women cheated of their own souls 
Know the unwearied freedom of the great Nurser? 
They love by law and they unlove by law. 
But I perceive the gray and drifting sky freely 
Enfolding the strong hills, as women enfold strong men. 

TRUTH: 
The robins build homes in the maples for love 
And the swallows under the eaves ; 
Their nests are frail things, but the foundations are strong. 

50 



POET: 
I seek my laws in the hills and fields. 
I rejoice in the hills which draw their veils about them 

like brides. 
My heart sings to the primal awakening, 
And to the unfolding of the leaves. 

TRUTH: 
How shall they bourgeon without freedom? 
Resolve the sprouting of a grain of wheat, 
Or shy unfoldment of the oak's young leaves. 
The poppy-seeds insistent copy of the parent's scarlet 

loveliness ; 
Make but one poppy-seed> 
Then have you resolved life, and life is all. 
Then such a man might dare to say unto his brother, 
"Thou Shalt, or thou shalt not." 

POET: 
Oh, who can make a seed of grass, or bud, 
Which with its secret alchemy 
Bears still its proper fruit? 

TRUTH: 
But it is childish-easy to destroy. 

POET: 
Or who can fashion forth a soul? 

TRUTH: 
But it is brutal-easy to destroy a soul. 
It is the pastime of Civilization. 

POET: 

How shall the soul live ? 

TRUTH: 
The life of the soul is freedom. 

51 



POET: 
Oh, Truth, what is the death of the soul? 

TRUTH: 
The death of the soul is authority. 
None is fit to govern another. 
Self-choice is best, even though it blunder. 

POET: 
Unto myself I am of greater stature than another. 
And another is to himself of greater stature than I. 

TRUTH: 
Only by self-expression, 
The nettle, as well as the rose. 
Is the growth of the soul. 

VII. 

TRUTH: 
Not till Man be lawless will he be lawful. 
Not till each is free to be immoral 
Will there be morality. 
Not till he may be impure will he be pure. 

POET: 
I laugh at this Morality, a painted mask. 

TRUTH: 
Behold the grass and the trees; 
Do they think fearfully lest they offend 
The grass and the trees of yester-year? 
As the trees put out their blossoms. 
So should Man blossom ; 
The apple-trees, with their fruit. 
And the locust-trees which toss their blonde curls 
And seduce the Breeze with honey. 

52 



POET: 
What have I to do with the beauty of the morning and 

the evening 
Or the enchantments of the seasons. 
Until the songs of those who possess their own souls be 

heard? 
How shall I declare the singing of birds 
Until everywhere there is the laughter of children? 
How shall I publish the march of the Night 
Until everywhere the breasts of the mothers 
Are full for the children? 
Shall I watch with delight 
The whirling skirts of the Rain, 
Which comes down the hills, 
Flaunting her diaphanous draperies, 
Or shall I be glad with the new-bom buds 
Which, before the palpitating bosom of Spring, weave 

veils of verdure? 
How can I, seeing Poverty, rejoice in the shrilling of 

grasshoppers. 
Crickets and cicadas, little unseen poets, 
Which chant the passion of Summer, 
Lying pale in the arms of overtaking Autumn? 
Shall I concern myself with the distant stars 
And the hushed murmur of the amorous leaves by night? 
Shall I stand with young lovers in the enfolding darkness. 
Or listen to the songs of lovers who beget new slaves? 
I know that the wings of their love are broken. 
I know that their love is defiled by priests. 
Shall I shrill like the feeble voice of the katydid, 
Or chirp a querulous tune, 

Like a blackbird clinging to a cat-tail above a marsh. 
While children are begotten of Poverty 
On the dry breasts of mothers? 

TRUTH: 
Civilization! Moloch insatiable! 

53 



VIII. 
POET: 
Here in the abode of Meditation, 
Unannoyed of men, 

Let me commune with you, silent Mother, face to face. 
Teach me to speak so that men must listen. 
Not only those who buzz this little hour, 
But those to come. 

TRUTH: 
Speak. They will listen. 

POET: 
Who has said to you, ye Masters, the Earth shall be yours. 
And your brethren be your tenants? 
V>^ho has given you possession of your brethren. 
Or who has made you custodian of the right to live? 
Who has made the laws which have created you overlords. 
Or by what right are the laws by which your brethren are 
disinherited? 

TRUTH: 
Greater than the building of great cities 
Is the building of the soul of Man. 

POET: 
Flower most glorious of Earth. 
I have bitten its root with a poison 
More bitter than the fangs of a serpent. 

TRUTH: 
Nature has filled the cradle 
With abundance overflowing. 
But the rulers have snatched away her gifts. 

POET: 
And I have consented. 

54 



IX. 

POET: 

Shall I watch Infinity set aflame her pageantry of worlds 

And light her candles in the halls of space, 

And know mine ignorance, 

Yet dare to beckon Love from heaven 

To fat an obscene god with guts of gold? 

Shall I, who look up to the stars 

From a level no higher than the tortoise, 

Nay, cannot soar so far as the dusky beetle, 

Dare to fasten shackles on Love, the master of the world? 

Shall I, in the morning, listen to the whistle of the lark. 

Or in the evening hark unto the petty tinkle of a lover's 

lute. 
While the clamors of a devouring monster 
Drown the birth-cries, and the iron clang of hammers 
Hushes the moans of mothers? 

I will not sing of Love till women 

Be the moulders of young gods, 

Serenely choosing their mates. 

I will not sing of Life till all are glad. 

I will not sing of motherhood 

While there are filthy dens where womanhood gluts on 

despair 
And the air stinks with the curses of drunkards. 
I will not sing of manhood while Poverty 
Stands by the yawning jails, doors unto Hell. 

I know what Nature is and her largesse. 

I know that her beauty is infinite. 

Her freedom perfect and her tenderness everlasting. 

My throat yearns to sing a song of beauty. 

For my soul keeps in its secret chamber 

The madness of a wind-swept hill-top 

Where, from under a shading laurel. 

We watched the white clouds lure the winds, their lovers, 

55 



Down into the caverns of the sky, 

And all was freedom. 

The little birds fluttered in and out the leafy coverts ; 

The hawks slanted to the breeze, 

And the squirrels ran about, 

Sitting erect, suddenly, questioning. 

The flowers blossomed without a governor, 

And the beautiful madrona-trees. 

With limbs smooth as the limbs of nymphs, 

Whispered to the roving winds. 

But you, my brothers and my sisters. 

Cannot watch the depthless blue 

From under a wide-spreading oak. 

There are hills for all and oaks for all. 

And the airy blue covers the world ; 

But you may not lie at ease awhile upon a hill-top. 

And examine your souls. 

You sit under a dark roof through which 

Filters neither sun, nor stars. 

You are robbed of your inheritance. 

From the hill-top may be seen the skyey threads 

Which are the rivers. 

I may go down to them and lie by them. 

Refilling the vessels of my soul; 

But what to you, oh work-worn, weary ones. 

Are the secret conversations of the waters? 

Do they carry you afar, enchanted and enthralled. 

Like half-heard, mystic, murmured incantations 

Of soft-shod, hushed magicians 

Who lift you, sleeping, and in Lethean langour 

Bear you unto the perfect meadows? 

Do the white-handed nymphs await your coming 

And hide within the fragrant fringes. 

Slender rushes, mint and mallow? 

Do you. Life-cheated brothers. 

Hear the continuous warble of the hidden nymphs? 

Their far, faint laughter? 

56 



Young lovers lie upon the grass 

And listen to the river's muttered conversations; 

Little children splash their white bodies 

With bright crystals, 

And the indignant magpies fly, screaming. 

From the willows ; royal fellows in black-and-white, 

Who surely were once a princess, appareled in ermine ; 

All the beasts and fowl of the Desert, 

In the evening, come to drink. 

And the river refuses not life to any. 

Far down its course, it is led out 

Upon the alfalfa-fields, where the poplars 

Watch about the garden. 

And an old man stands upon the bank. 

To him the voices of the water murmur, "Peace." 

They are calling to him the call of Eternity. 

But, to the haggard ones who toil, 

The conversation of the waters 

Comes as the sullen voice of Moloch, 

Grumbling and growling in the roll of the wheels 

Which grind up flesh, 

"Work! Work! Work!" 

Endless as the river's flowing. 

"Toil! Toil! Toil!" 

Ceaseless as the river's murmur. 

"Never! Never! Never!" 

Knowing peace or beauty. 

I am consumed with pity for the millions of weary 

workers 
Who drudge till their last shred snaps. 
And over them, cowering, clouding, 
Like a sentinel-ghost threatening, terrifying. 
Ever stands the all-degrading Penury of Age ; 
A Dread, shadowy but relentless. 

Which perches on your backs, my brothers and my sisters, 
As a magpie perches on the back of a lean cow, 

57 



Awaiting death by the dry water-hole ; 
Patient, persistent, never leaving. 

TRUTH: 
Age, that second childhood which should smile toward 

Death, 
And hear, once more, those singers 
Which Life's noises have shut out. 

POET: 
The toilers know not the song of the waters, 
Nor the sympathy of the grass ; 
They bathe not their souls in the pools of leisure, 
Nor ever cast their eyes upward 

Where the clouds, reckless, set their silver sails upon the 
upper main. 

TRUTH: 
Nor ever look upon the meadows where the carefully 
tended cattle lie among the buttercups. 

POET: 
They know not the sweet, respected weaknesses of age. 

TRUTH: 
Age cannot work, and Death delays too long. 



X. 

TRUTH: 
Freedom is a domed and pillared palace, 
The sanctuary where Birth is ennobled. 

POET: 
I will not sing the ecstasy of the mother's birth-pang 
Till Birth be free as Death ; 
Nor will I voice the nobility of Motherhood, 
Till all motherhood be noble as Life itself. 
I will sing a song of Bastards, 
The free children of free mothers. 

58 



Oh, noble company of bastards, 

Beloved of great Nature, 

You are her petted children, bom of her own desire ; 

She has given you the stars for playthings and taught the 

winds to bring you offerings ; 
She has said to the sun these are your brothers and to 

the moon these are your sisters ; 
She has lain close to you in your secret cradle and has 

whispered to you all the music of the unknown 

sanctuaries and has dangled before your eyes the 

pictures of the undiscovered world. 
For you she has woven wreaths of bay 
And has crowned your brows with laurel ; 
She has not delayed your coming for a priest's 

incantation ; 
Nor held back the mystery of your creation 
Till the State give its consent. 
She has not branded "Bastard" on your smooth, soft 

palms. 
Nor on the pink soles of your little feet. 
The great Mother is ignorant and indifferent 
That you are baby breakers of the Law, 
And she laughs scornfully at the laws of the Rulers. 
She has set her own brand upon your souls, 
And has given you place in the glorious company 
Of poets, musicians, painters, declarers of knowledge. 
Governors and captains, seers and conquerors, 
William the Bastard, of Normandy, 
And Alexander Hamilton, 
And the Great Deliverer, standing alone, 
Sad ; silent ; rugged ; like a storm-beaten spruce 
On a seaward cliff ; m.elancholy ; misunderstood of men, 
And infinitely patient. 

TRUTH: 
Birth earlier than Death ; 
The mystery including all mysteries ; 
Next step toward the Infinite ; 

59 



Last link between the unvisioned Future and the 

unknown Past. 
Back to that dim time when creation was, 
And the young stars danced new in their glory ; 
When giant lizards swam on sunset-seas 
And leviathans crushed through the ferny forests ; 
On to that time when man shall be attuned 
Unto the harmony called celestial, 
And shall live perfectly, as the stars 
Walk their eternal paths, nor ever stumble. 
Birth, echo of Eternity ; 
Earth's purest purity. 

POET: 
The latest note in Nature's passional. 



XI. 

POET: 
I am a reaper in disordered fields. 

TRUTH: 
You reap a carrion harvest. 

POET: 
Tormenting pain ; unsatisfied longing ; 
A killing hunger of the body 
And a killing hunger of the soul. 

TRUTH: 
Hate, despair, anxiety, drunkenness; crime; degradation. 

POET: 
As a reaper gathers his sheaves, 
I gather the jails, the almshouses, 
The churches, the state-houses ; 
The palaces of the idle rich ; 
The filthy nests of the debased poor ; 
Pale faces, sunken cheeks ; staring eyes ; 
Thin arms, stretched up for bread ; 

60 



Crippled and distorted bodies ; 
Crippled and distorted souls. 

TRUTH: 

Harvest from the planting of that Insolence, the State, 

Which is a vessel of injustice from which is poured 
privilege, monopoly, laws. 

Who gave the Many the right to prohibit self-hood to one 

More than that one shall prohibit self-hood to many? 

You perceive the wickedness of one grinding many, 

But you perceive not the wickedness of many controlling 
one. 

You are glad that the son of a laborer 

May become a money king. 

And you know not that this is the very evil. 

You smell a poisoned flower. 

You call the burglars, highwaymen and pickpockets law- 
breakers. 

And you know not it is the lawmakers who are highway- 
men and pickpockets. 

Nature has set the earth open and bountiful 

And has put hunger for joy into men's hearts. 

And thirst for soul-breeding leisure ; 

But the lawmakers have robbed their brethren and 
forcibly taken toll at the gates. 

POET: 

Shall I pity the debased ones 

And not pity those who have wrought the debasement? 

Shall I curse those who have robbed their brethren 

And not curse myself? 

Shall I pity the joy-denied ones, and pass on? 

Shall I forgive the criminals, haughtily, and go my way? 

What trick of the great wheel, invisible, 

Gave to them their places, and to me mine? 

What smallest accident, within the cloudy tangle of the 

Past 
Might have shifted our places? 

6i 



Why are not they I, and I they? 

Can I track back to Creation's steamy bed 

And knovv' why I am I, and they are they? 

I know I have not made myself, 

Nor have they made themselves. 

If I am innocent of my goodness, 

They are innocent of their badness. 

If I am helpless of my genius, 

They are helpless of their besottedness. 

I have not wrought myself in any part. 

Nor they themselves. 

We are thrown off, as bubbles by the sea ; 

We are as thistledown which voyages upon the unseen 

air, 
Or the globed gossamer of the dandelion 
Which the wind seedeth. 
But this I know, there is not one 
Who would not rather rejoice 
To walk erect, knowing man's nobility, 
Leading his soul up to the heights, 
Above the mists, and dreamful sit a little while beyond 

the clouds, 

TRUTH: 
The heart of Man, from the beginning, 
Has palpitated for the stars. 

POET: 
Yes, I know in the very certainty of my heart 
There is none who does not prefer 
To walk among the dewy fields, 
Psalm with the birds, 
And in the vastness of the morning 
Drink the air of greatness. 

TRUTH: 
Man seeks to put on wings 
And soar toward the sun; 
But his wings are broken by his own tyranny. 

62 



POET: 

Would I might catch vision of the perfect soul, 
The wondrous ultimate, 
A prize for angels. 

For this, through the dizzy aeons of the Past, 
Has our strange worm crawled out from the ooze of Time 
And tremblingly has stood erect, conceiving beauty beau- 
tifully conceived; 
Conceiving freedom for conceived free. 
Of joy anhungered for that life is joy. 
It is sad to me that 

These weary ones, with weak faces and cunning eyes, 
Whom we have made. 
Shall never know the stature of a soul. 

TRUTH: 
Nor any, till the laws cease from their obstructions. 

POET: 
Oh, what do the weary ones. 
With little degenerate heads and brutal faces, 
Know of their inheritance? 
Before they were bom, they were stamped for 

Destruction. 
Nature shakes out from her fingers abundance. 
But Man's laws have branded the babes in the womb, 

"Disinherited." 

TRUTH: 
Behold the pedigree of Degradation: 
Authority, maker of laws, father of Privilege ; 
Privilege, father of Poverty ; 
Poverty, father of all crime and degeneration. 

POET: 

Come, Holy Revolution. As Morning, the great architect, 

gilds the dome of the world. 
So hope is growing upon the clouds of my soul. 

63 



See, the night has shrunk away over the edge of the 

Desert ; 
The coyote has ceased from his lamentations ; 
The hill-tops are touched with pink, 
And presently, like a fiery harlequin. 
The sun will vault over the purple barriers ; 
And shepherds will call to their woolly flocks. 

TRUTH: 
So shall the Revolution come. 
And Freedom, the dawn of the new day. 

POET: 

I rejoice in the silent consolations of the Desert 

And am soothed by the tenderness of the morning-breeze, 

But what of the accusing groans 

From the prisons which Man has builded. 

Wherein his victims die the living death? 

I rejoice in the aromatic smell of the sage-brush after the 

rain; 
The circling of hawks and buzzards ; 
The cooing of plaintive doves. 

And complaining of little cuckoo-owls from their burrows. 
These things, and more, infinitely, 
Penetrate my heart with gladness; 
But shall my soul be satisfied if I alone am glad, 
And not my brother? 

Shall I be content to see the laughing nymphs 
Spread a carpet to invite the gleaming feet of Spring, 
The twinkling feet of shy, persuasive, mystic, rhythmic 

Spring? 
Or, if I fly from this Desert to the mountains. 
What to me is the hushed, persistent laughter of summer 

woods. 
Glimpses of brown-armed dryads, lying beneath the oaks, 
Rejoicing in the coquetry of the trees? 
Or all the winds of Freedom, 

64 



While my soul is choked with the knowledge 

That Man as a ruler over his brethren 

Has builded strong the prisons 

And dug for his brethren the pits of putrefaction? 

Shall I set my ear to catch the song of Earth's singing, 
Or be glad of the voices of my little brothers, the frogs, 
Who wake so knowingly in the Springtime ; 
Or rejoice in the monodies of crickets and grasshoppers, 
Plaintively shrilling their anthems ? 

Can I wholly rejoice in the clear exultance of birds 

When the buds put forth again. 

Or share the pridefulness of anxious mothers 

When in the sunny thicket they teach their young to fly? 

My chained heart gossips with them 

When in painted Autumn they gather together 

Before they travel Southward on the unruled air. 

As so, oh my Soul, would I rejoice 

To fly unto a free and sunnier world. 

But can I be glad in the freedom of the birds 
When the weary millions are oppressed? 
Can I be consoled by the splendor of my birthright 
When I know that the millions bow their heads and 

starve in darkness? 
A little while, they move feebly between the cradle and 

the grave. 
As fledglings stir within their nest, 
So the Poor stir a moment, in a cloudy morning. 
And are quickly devoured by the dark coming eagles. 

TRUTH: 
Revolution ! Revolution ! 

POET: 
Before me is a vast sea of brutal faces, 
Beaten down into the dust. 
And within each, burning like a dim lamp, 

65 



Is a hopeless soul. 

Who has made these hopeless souls? 

Who has moulded these brutal faces? 

TRUTH: 
The State, Maker of Laws and Privilege, 
Harborer of plunderers; 
Even as an old barn is a harborer of rats. 

POET: 
The primal maternity offers her abundant breasts, 
Yearning as a mother. 

TRUTH: 
But the oppressors drain her to themselves. 
They build about the eternal mother a wall of stone 

whereon are placed pickets who remorselessly exclude 

her children. 
The stones of the wall are laws and the pickets are those 

who enforce the laws. 
The privileged who dwell within toss over the wall a 

crust from their abundance, crying, "Witness our 

charity," 
But they will not let the poor tear down the wall to share 

of the abundance. 

POET: 
They are willing to give to the Poor a crumb. 
But they are not willing to get off their backs. 

TRUTH: 
Revolution ! Oh, blessed Revolution ! 

POET: 
Behind the laws are rifles and bullets whining the message 
of the lawmakers. 

TRUTH: 
Force is the mother of iniquity. 
And from her womb the greatest iniquity the law, 

66 



POET: 
Let me know myself. 

TRUTH: 
Stand upon the star Arcturus 
And know your littleness. 
The wheeling orb of your imprisoned destiny but a grain 

of dust, 
Twirled between the palms of Eternity ; 
Yourselves, not greater 
Than the humblest fly. 
There is not one of you has made himself. 
Neither the idolaters, so contemptibly respectable, 
Nor the thieves, or prostitutes, so contemptuously cast 

out. 
You have falsified the conditions of Nature. 
You have set yourself against the Creator ; 
You worship an idol insatiable ! 

Authority breeding Poverty, and Poverty breeding all 

distortion, ugliness, degeneration. 
Murderers, thieves, prostitutes. 
All criminals and degraded ones ; 
There is not one who is not helpless in his destiny. 
Not sinner but sinned against. 
Children of inheritance, hatched from the eggs of 

Poverty, 
Far-bred offspring of long Injustice, 

Murderers, thieves, prostitutes, drunkards, spewed out by 
Society — your dam, who strangles her own offspring. 
You, too, shall be the breeders of Injustice, 
And shall pay back to your mother the curse she has put 

upon you. 
She has wronged you more than you can wrong her. 
You are the cancer of her bosom. 

POET: 
I have denied Nature and falsified myself. 
But now I stand in this Desert and bare my soul, 

67 



Even as the primeval Desert is bare. 

I lift up my face and stretch my hands unto the sky, 

And in the palace of Solitude I cry aloud : 

"Oh, Nature, unknown and unknowable, 

"Who only hath fashioned us, 

"Only Creator and only God, 

"Teach me, almighty Mother, 

"Which is the sinner, 

"My sisters, whom I have enslaved, or I? 

"My brothers, whom I have disinherited, or I? 

"The sinner, who has sinned without choice, 

"Who before he was born was made sinful, 

"Or I who have falsified all your conditions, 

"And robbed my brothers of their birthright?" 

TRUTH: 
By the eternal Silence, you are answered. 

POET: 
See ! Here is a seed covered with thorns. 
Which blows about the Desert. 
I will be such a seed, bearing thorns and a new life. 
From today I will no longer consent to the falsifying of 

Nature's conditions. 
I will no longer consent to Authority, Privilege, Poverty ; 
I will no longer deny my Creator, omnipotent, universal, 

surrounding. 
I will go to Nature, as a child to its mother. 
And I will place my hands between her knees. 
And my head in her lap. 

I will rest in her bosom, and she shall nurse me. 
I will obey her in all things. 

And she will feed me with the honeycomb of Freedom. 
I shall taste of Freedom not only for myself. 
But for all men. 

Not one shall be born but shall know happiness. 
None shall know sin. 

68 



TRUTH: 
There is no sin, save to deny Nature. 
Man maketh sin, and the strength of Sin is the law. 



XII. 
POET: 
Like the dancing of images in a mirage, 
I see the idolaters crowding into the temple of the 

Vulture, 
Which is builded by the hands of the dying. 
They are fat and comfortable, well-dressed and insolent. 
The mediocre multitude follow them like little dogs, 

wagging sycophantic tails, 
They circle about the pedestal of the God of Gold, crying : 
"How wicked are the men who would alter the Things 

that Are ; 
"We are comfortable. 

"To the jail with the agitators ; socialists ; anarchists, 
"All those who on the street-corner stir up discontent. 
"By the Law we sit upon the backs of the people. 
"They stink in their poverty, 
"But we smell sweet unto our own nostrils. 
"Why should the little children filter the skyey gold 

through their fingers? 
"It has never been so." 

TRUTH: 
Civilization ! Moloch insatiable ! 

POET: 
The worshipers bow down to the bellied God, saying : 
"Oh, Golden God, thy name is Success. 
"We adore thee ; we worship thee. 
"Only gold is beautiful in thy sight. 
"Thou takest the blood of the workers. 
"Upon thine altar we have stretched Beauty, 
"A young girl, naked, and have stabbed her 

69 



"So that her blood runs down to the ground. 

"Oh, God, thou pilest up dead things which we worship. 

"To thee we feed the Earth, and her abundance, 

"The stars and their beauty. 

"The thinkers who patiently unravel 

"The careful secrets of the universe. 

"All who make water to gush from the rocks ; 

"All who cause the deserts to blossom. 

"We feed thee the men who might become as gods, 

"And the women, the lilies of the world. 

"Brotherhod, mirth, love ; genius, art, poesy and thought ; 

"Those who hold the lamp on high ; 

"Those who strike the stones from the path 

"And make easier the way. 

"The weavers of sweet sounds 

"Whose billows sweep against eternity. 

"The poets, singers of the soul ; 

"We feed thee that future whence we hear dim songs ; 

"That beauty which is deathless, beyond weighing. 

"All the dreamers of the soul, 

"Those who dream divinest dreams." 



XIII. 
POET: 
Like the sea, or never-ceasing thunder, heard afar, 
I hear the roaring of monsters. 

TRUTH: 
Cities. Vast, irresistible, wonderful, dreadful, beautiful, 

hideous, devouring and giving birth ; 
Cradles of Life's perfection and its grave. 

POET: 
Hives whose honey is bitter-sweet. 
Tall geni against the sky ; 
Waving banners of smoke and steam ; 
The Titan-wrought fret-work of spires, domes, minarets 
and cloud-touching roofs ; 

70 



The slow-flowing channels where life chafes against the 

walls — each drop strange isolate, desolate. 
Nor one drop knowing another. 
The stoney streets ablaze with lights; briUiant, hopeful, 

gay, childish, barbaric — beautiful as light is ever 

beautiful — crude, tinseled, chimerical. 
The streets sun-gilt, garish and rotten; scintillant or 

sombre ; 
Where many seek death. 

The great docks which the waters lick, sleepily ; 
The black steamers lazily lying along the docks, 
Dreaming of conquered tempests ; 

Their hollow entrails gorged with the spoil of many ports. 
They lie in wait for the plunder of the world. 
Here slim-sparred vessels cease from waving their masts 
To and fro against the sky, and rest by the wharves. 
Little tugs puff fussily about. 

And donkey-engines cough noisily, intermittently. 
Swinging the derricks to and fro, lading and unlading. 
Longshoremen, in faded flannel shirts, open at the breast, 
And sleeves rolled up, run back and forth 
With their trucks, breathless. 
How encouraging is their strength when Justice shall 

come. 
And the silken play of their muscles, exquisite, wonderful, 
Powerful to accomplish when Justice shall be foreman of 

the world. 
They are skilled athletes in the arena of Industry, 
But they earn not the leisure of athletes. 
They are the ranks of soldiers in a battle. If one stumbles 

they pass over him ; if one be wounded he is lost. 
They receive not the care of soldiers. 

The long freight-trains rumble throughout the night 
And in the early morning, with a sudden great crash. 
Stop beside the warehouse. 
Their husbands, the leviathan engines, 
Trembling with power, leave them, 

71 



And go away, panting. They have done their service. 

O, wonderful service when Justice shall hold the lever. 

Truck-men, their naked chests shining with sweat, 

Snatch the trains empty of boxes, bales and barrels ; 

And, amid shouting at men and horses, 

Crack of whips, honk of horns, 

The trucks and auto-trucks are loaded, 

And hurry into the canyons of the city. 

When Freedom and Justice get down among the workers. 

Shoulder to shoulder, 

The brawling and cursing shall cease 

And the shouts of Labor shall be jubilant, exultant, 

satisfied ; 
The city's streets are of stone ; its walls are of stone. 
And they grind the grist of Hell. 
But the cities shall hum with unbroken gladness, as hives 

in June, when the clover is white upon the grass and 

the locust blossoms sway upon the trees. 

TRUTH: 
O Blessed Revolution! 

POET: 
The stones of the city are without tongues or ears ; 
Its laughter is cold, its tears are hot ; 
In the hard, indifferent streets little mothers sell 

themselves for bread. 
And Daughters of Joy, dolls of Death, 
Are crowded to the morgue. 
Cripples, with a leering hypocrisy. 
Prey upon a greater hypocrisy. 
And the words of Christ are hollow between walls of 

stone. 
Luxury tramples Misery, and Misery laughs secretly at 

the day when it shall trample Luxury. 
The churches of the city are open, but empty. 
The jails are closed, but are full. 



TRUTH: 
Caskets of steel for the jewels which Civilization carefully 
polishes. 

POET: 
The jail-smell, 

Sickening, covered up with drugs. 
As a corpse in the sun covered with lime. 
And its heart the windowless chamber where deserted 

men are strangled. 
O for the pure breath of the redolent meadows. 

TRUTH: 
Look not to your churches ; the jails are the pulse of your 

sickness. 
The dwellers know not the aroma of the calm-giving 

forest. They have never seen 
Where feathery-ferns are rooted, spreading their plumes 
And mosses enamel the trees with voluptuous green. 
They have never smelled the salt of the sea nor the spice 

of the mountains, nor kissed the lips of a dryad or 

loafed on the breast of the Mother. 
Faces sallow with jail-pallor, melancholy, hopeless, 

helpless. 
Pressed against the iron bars of despair. 

POET: 
Cages for the rats of Society's fetid cellars. 
The dull-eyed little beetles in their cages, 
And the keen-eyed birds of prey in their cages. 
Yet the greater falcons are not here. 
The eagles know not the jail ; 
Here are the law-breakers, but where be the law-makers? 

TRUTH: 
How overcrowded with the Rich were the jails, 
If jails were a place for loafers. 

73 



POET: 
How crowded with the Rich were the jails, 
If the jails were a place for robbers. 

TRUTH: 
Not jails, but Revolution. 

POET: 

The outcast birds of prey press against their cage. 

TRUTH: 
A greater eagle will rend them. 

POET: 
Oh, the poor of the cities, 
Which drain off into the slums 
As the lees of wine to the bottom of the vats. 

TRUTH: 
It is a black wine and sits as poison in the cup. 

POET: 

I have seen the poor sitting naked in the city kennels, 

Quarreling over the dirty water of the gutter. 

I thought of all free things ; the large sky 

And the clear rivers which eternally carry the sky 

Beneath the whispering willows. 

The brooks, which in Springtime 

Fret their way down the hillside, 

Through the roots of the silver-stemmed alders, which 

stand expectant; 
The hillsides covered with lusset bracken, which will 

soon be green with the new life. 
Clouds voyaging on unknown adventures, winds dancing 

with the tall grasses which glisten; little chipmunks, 

dragon flies and wrens. 
But before me was the black slime of the city's gutters 
Where the puny children, in play, too pathetical, 
Grasped at childhood which fluttered by, like a gray moth. 
If Genius be alight in one of these, 

74 



The cold hand of the God of Gold 
Is eager to extinguish it. 

TRUTH: 
Moloch insatiable! 

POET: 

The blood of children drips from the wine-press. 

TRUTH: 
There is another wine of another vintage. 
Revolution! Revolution! Revolution! Red wine, warm 
from the press. 

POET: 
Above the little ones grins Hag Poverty ; 
With cruel claws and lean, flat breast. 
She hugs the children, grinning ; leering, mocking. 
Her caress is death. 

I see half-starved families, huddled together 
In hot and putrid rooms. 
Stinking dens for sacred childbirth. 

TRUTH: 
Oh, the breeding of the puny little maggots. 

POET: 
My heart is heavy when I think of those who hunger, and 

cannot reach the bountiful breasts. 
The brown, wet laps of fields, 
Steaming beneath the April sun. 
Billowy seas of yellow harvest; rippling to the frolic of 

the wind. 
Bourgeoning of trees, coquetting with the jewelry of new 

buds. 
Delicately arranging them. 
As a Princess decks herself with emeralds, smiling 

sedately. 
Fruit-trees, heavy with their plundering ; 
Young warriors, laden with the loot of cities. 

75 



The ripe and plenteous fruiting of the year 

When, as a mother at evening calls to her children, 

"Come," 
So Earth calls to every one of her offspring, 
"Come unto me. I will feed you all. 
"Not one of you shall lie down hungry." 
Oh, what to me is the whisper of the Forest, 
Or the tinkling wheel in the blackbird's throat. 
And all the benediction of the valleys, 
While thousands die hungry and athirst upon the stones 

of the city? 

TRUTH: 
Nature has builded her house marvelously ; 
But Man has cast out his brother. 
And drained him into the slums as poisonous dregs. 

POET: 

The city is a monster, powerful, restless, sinuous ; terrify- 
ing, vague, vast, mysterious, mystic, relentless ; not yet 
beautiful; 

Lying upon carrion as a monster lion. 

Roaring ; devouring ; sullenly growling ; 

Devouring its prey under the stars, indifferent. 



XIV. 
POET: 
Each seed, like a winged messenger of Time, voyages the 

Ages. 
From the polished chestnut, ever the wide-spreading 

chestnut-tree, 
Generous of shade and food ; 

And from the brown smoke of the puff-ball, forever 
Pearls along the Morning pathway 
Amid the threaded diamonds of the Moon-woven 

gossamer. 
Dewy sheets spread by the lowly spiders. 

76 



TRUTH: 
From a sordid people, sordidness ; from Greed, 

Soullessness. 
Imagination is the soul of a people ; the flower which fades 

not; 
Not things live, but Thought ; the sweet-tasted fruit of the 

soul. 

POET: 
To Thought, Imagination is as the wind to Autumn- 
leaves, 
Whirling the soul from the uttermost depths of the sea 
To the caravan of stars. It rides high upon the wings of 

the Morning 
And wrestles with the lightning. 

It gives communion with the skies by day and by night ; 
And, like an invisible sylph, trailing her silver draperies, 

converses with the trees, the rivers, the flowers and the 

reticent grasses ; 
Making the soul one with those who wring their hands, 

weeping, 
And one with the company which dance to music and 

laughter. 
By Imagination Man takes the hands of the gods who 

look afar. 
And sees the things which are not. 
And lo ! the things which are not become more eternal 
Than the things which are. 

TRUTH: 
Can a machine conceive beauty, 
Or has a machine imagination? 
The inventions of Man have enslaved him, 
He thinks not for himself ; he works not for himself ; 
He dreams not at all ; his hoping is only against hunger. 
The monsters he has harnessed 
Have become the obedient dragons of the masters. 
And have snatched him into slavery. 
The end of his toil is profit for the Oppressors. 

77 



Accursed is labor for another, without justice. 

Contemptible is the labor of a slave. 

Blessed is leisure, the miraculous gateway. 

The ponderous machines should have unlocked the gates 

of the miraculous gardens, but they are ogres before 

the gates. 
You cannot gather figs from thistles, 
Yet you blindly hope, against the voice of the centuries. 
For good out of the ancient evil conditions. 
Can you gather blossoms of the soul 
From the tree, Poverty? 
The ancient degradations will remain 
While the ancient conditions are unchanged. 
Revolution is your only doctor. 

POET: 
Nature works not the revolution of her seasons with 

violence. 
Patiently the buds peep and the seasons steal away. 

TRUTH: 
Yet Winter spares not the outworn tree, 
Nor stays her tempest lest the rotten fall. 
Ever the new roots upon the old. 
The vines throw the graceful garland of their youth 
About the dying ; the old is forgotten. 
Has it not ever been sacred that a few should die. 
That all may live? 

You are willing to die for your rulers. 
Are you not willing to die for your own souls? 
Blood is a rich fertilizer; 
It will make lilies bloom amid stones, even in the streets 

of the city. 
Rebellion is a holy thing. 
Conceived by the God in Man. 

POET: 
Freedom is a blood-kissed angel. 

78 



TRUTH: 
Revolution, your redeemer ! 

POET: 
There will be for all joy beyond all joy forever. 

TRUTH: 
And dreams beyond all dreams. 

XV. 
POET: 
The Desert-warbler caresses the Dawn, 
And the lark tops the world with song. 
But Spring wakes not for the oppressed, 
Neither in this desert, nor in the green valleys. 
In vain she entices them into her chamber 
Where the daffodils are begotten. 
There is no stir of joy in their blood 
Because the world is new-born. 
No fragrance in the laughter of the grass ; 
No delight in the flowers gleeful of their resurrection. 
They are even ignorant of the tang of the damp, delicious, 

new-ploughed fields; 
The feet of Dawn are before the gates, 
Behind the purple mountains, where the sky is silver. 
The lark is saluting his footsteps, 
And the awakening East is listening. 
Upon the tip of a sage-brush the warbler prays. 
Unafraid of the solitude ; undismayed in the bigness of 

the universe. 
Like a little acolyte, in grey robes, 
He salutes the Dawn, 

Which casts off suddenly his diaphanous mantle 
And tosses into the air his necklace of jewels ; 
Firing the sky with golden banners and transmuting 
The sand and rocks into gold. 
The world is melted in a golden crucible. 
He shoots his fiery arrows to the zenith 

79 



And sets the Universe ablaze ; 

All things rejoice. The Desert murmurs and the skies cry 

aloud in ectasy : 
The Sun has come ; the Sun ; the Sun. 

TRUTH: 
Glorious is the coming of the Sun in the Desert ; 
But Dawn also tarries before the gates of disaster. 
I see the toil-worn ants hurrying out of their filthy nests, 
Clutching at their throats with bony fingers 
And with frightened faces murmuring : 
"To eat ; only to eat." 
To work until the night comes. 
To sink exhausted, squeezed utterly dry. 
To be fed again to the insatiable machines 
At the next dawning. 

I see men with lusterless eyes, women with pale faces, 
And the little children who have never laughed. 

POET: 
Do these ever hear the larks chanting matins, 
Or finches praying in the wild-rose thickets? 
Do these lie down where the brooks commune with their 

pebbled floors. 
Tricking the May-flies to their gauzy dance. 
And warbling to the mouth-dripping kine 
A song of pastures, of minty beds and purple bergamot? 

TRUTH: 
The rest for the toilers is Oblivion. 

POET: 
Never once have they heard the little rivers calling. 
Almost impatiently : "Lie down by our hurrying. 
"Rest ye beside us. 

"Let us whisper to you out of Eternity 
"And soothe your ears with our legends. 
"You are but for a moment, but we are forever. 

80 



"You shall not see our glancing mysteries, 

"But they shall endure. 

"Chattering, laughing, brawling, intoning our invocation. 

"We are of the Past and of the Future. 

"You shall creep back into the earth and be gone, 

"But we will soothe the ears of your children. 

"Your errors shall sink with you, 

"But we are of the perfection of Nature." 

TRUTH: 
As the rivers carve their channels, 
So Discontent carves the soul. 

POET: 

My present ears are deaf unto the music of the morning. 
I do not hear the pied yellowhammer beat his drum to 

drowsy Summer, 
Nor the crickets chirp when the reapers are faint with the 

heat. 
I cannot smile at the pouch-cheeked chipmunk. 
Which runs swiftly on the fence-rail, 
Escaping from the wheat-field, a thief for bread. 

TRUTH: 
Nature loves the thieves who steal for bread. 

POET: 

In the saffron-tinted dawn, 

Little wrens restlessly ramble in the hedges, 

Making a gay noise, chirping and twittering. 

From somewhere the voice of a white-throated sparrow 
is heard. 

Further off, near the murmurous irrigation-ditch, 

On the top of a poplar, Morning's candle. 

Lit for his coming, a lark empties his heart ; 

But the oppressors of the people 

Draw their silken curtains together to shut out the sweet- 
breathing day 

Which, like a ruthless god, still dares intrude. 

8i 



TRUTH: 
How beautiful is the song of the warbler in this serene 
silence. 

POET: 
I cannot hear it. 

I hear the moaning of a distant sea ; 
The sad, salt sea of tears; 
A never-ending moan across the sands of Time. 

TRUTH: 
The groan of resolute men and of mothers 
Who cover their heads before death. 
The feeble moan of little children 
Who do not understand. 

Do you hear the cry of the workers, scourged 
By the Life-whip, incessant : 
"Come, sordid, grisly Death, you feed us well"? 

POET: 
Oh, let me catch the warbler's litany. 
Let me be soothed with Nature's anthem. 

TRUTH: 
But Man makes discord in the tune. 
There sits the bellied god, with wide-open maw. 
And into his jaws is marching all the youth of the world. 

POET: 
They shall never know Springtime's budding hope. 
Nor Summer's laughter; 
The kiss of grass and matins of the birds, 
Those happy priestlings of the dawn ; 
Nor ever guess the sweeping circle of Earth's beautiful 

parade. 
There is for them no message in the clouds ; 
No fellowship in the soft caressing grasses by the 

wayside ; 
No leafy laughter; nor soothing, sibilant, soliloquies of 

leaves. 

82 



For them, the clear rivers run not, 

Nor fall the silent confidences of stars. 

They still must sweat in holes where never God looked in, 

Harnessing the baby-fingers, softer than young leaves, 

To toil for milk, till pitying Death, 

Watchful and merciful, opens the leaden gate 

Which leads at last to grass and flowers. 

TRUTH: 
And Peace everlasting! 



XVI. 
POET: 
Oh, Truth, when comes the new day? 

TRUTH: 
As the dawn cometh. 
Who can say it is here? 

POET: 
May not the soul travail freely? 
Must it be shackled with the ancient falsities? 
Even now, the soul of man is seeking its birth, 
As in the lost eternities the body sought its birth. 
The rulers and oppressors keep back the day of the soul, 
But it shall be born on that morrow which is Freedom. 
The worshipers of the God of Gold cry out stridently : 
"Do not the hawks devour the thrushes?" 

TRUTH: 
The song of the thrush is sweeter. It is remembered. 

POET: 
Yet the idolaters say : 
"We are superior." 



83 



TRUTH: 
Superior in robbery. 

Though they pile up tall buildings they shall be forgot. 
Nothing is remembered save the soul, 
Which comes we know not whence 
And distils upon the earth 
As a dew-drop in a tulip's cup. 

POET: 
Who are the robbers? 

TRUTH: 
The little robbers, of their necessities, rob the greater ; 
But the greater are rewarded. The servile multitude 
Bow before them, saying : 
"You are respectable." 

POET: 
Let none ever say of me, "He was respectable." 
The train-robber, the highwayman. 
All those who boldly take and boldly kill. 
And boldly tread the gallows' step. 
Are kin unto Drake, Raleigh, Cortez, Villon, Caesar, 
Whose daring charmed the world. 
But the fat-paunched robbers. 
Who, from the safety of their leathern chairs, 
Steal from the laborer his sweat. 
And murder by law the thin-armed children, 
Are venomous toads in the dark ; , 

Clammy, and without courage. They are respectable. 

TRUTH: 
Respectability, a cloak to cover the coward. 
To be respectable is to be contemptible. 
Whoever takes that which he has not earned is a robber ; 
But he who in the safe and honored chambers 
Spins the spider-laws which catch the laborer in the web 
Is more accursed than he who takes by the sword. 

84 



POET: 

Oh, is there none shall set the people free? 

TRUTH: 
Not one. 

Freedom dwells in a people's soul. 
When they desire the light it is here. 

POET: 
Oh, you consenting chattels. 
When will you understand and look up? 
Freedom awaits you as a scarlet bird 
Held between the hands of a tall woman. 
Ready to fly out and gladden the world. 

TRUTH: 
Words live in acts. 

Dreamers exalt, but Doers water with their blood the 
exaltation. 

POET: 
There is no birth without travail ; 
Neither shall Freedom be born without anguish. 

TRUTH: 
Dare to be yourself. 

POET: 
The path so steep and Pity persuades aside. 

TRUTH: 
Be pitiless unto greater things. 

POET: 

I know I should dare to suffer and to make others suffer, 
Even those I love, 

That I may be myself and the Future be greater. 
Does not each flower and tree insist upon its full 

perfection? 
I am not Nature's only care ; nor any one. 

85 



The Race is her care ; the Earth is her care ; 
And the vast unknown. Her greatest care that I be 
myself. 

TRUTH: 
Nature is the only God. 
Her sole condition each to be himself. 

POET: 
I see a star, and out of the silence I hear a whisper. 
It thrills me and enfolds me, 
Like the cool wind of the night 
Which passes over the Desert after the heat of day. 

TRUTH: 
Freedom. 

POET: 
I see a vision taller and brighter than the mirage ; 
A confused throng in robes of sunrise. 
Who lift reeds and palms and lyres and flashing swords ; 
And above them an angel, resting on the outstretched 

arms 
Of Morning and of Evening, 
An angel whose face I cannot see. 

TRUTH: 
Have you that vision? 

POET: 
It shall sustain me unto the grave. 

TRUTH: 
It will come. 

If bvit one has seen it, it will come. 
Oh, Poet, let your living be its sacrament, 
And your dying like the planting of lilies. 
So that your dust shall bloom again. 
Giving blossoms sweeter than yourself. 

86 



POET: 
I am lifted up and meditate above the clouds. 
I see we are but dwarfed and stunted things. 
Wanderers in a desert, running about in a lost circle, 
Cheated by the things which seem to be, 
But are not. 

TRUTH: 
You are prisoners in a dark cave 
And cannot grow unto the stature of your souls. 

POET: 
Before me is a sea of faces, 
Pale, passionate, despairing ; 
And in each one's face I see mine own. 
Nature has given me to dive into the depths of the sky; 
To catch faintly the pulsing tread of the stars 
When, through their bright recessional, we commune 

together. 
I know that life endures no longer than the breaking of a 

bubble ; 
Yet I have made it bitter for my brothers. 
April calls me from the jocund fields. 
I understand the gossip of the trees in summer; 
The adoration of the birds. 
And the acquiescence of the insects. 
Wind and sea speak to me. 
Their interrogation is one. 

The low-muttered music of the rivers sounds to me 
As if the unforgotten dead were striving to talk unto the 

living. 
Dumbly, yet happily, murmuring, in sobbing cadences. 
Skies, rivers, soft-speaking winds, quick-winged birds. 
Shy hidden insects, frogs and tree-toads. 
All say to me, "Life is joy. Love is life. 
"Life is ourselves and greater than ourselves. 
"Love is ourselves and greater than ourselves. 

87 ^ 



TRUTH: 
"Only in utter Liberty of Life and Love shall souls be 

bom." 

XVII. 
POET: 
All the sounds of Earth come sad to my ears ; 
The music of Spring and of Summer; 
Of birds, frogs and incessant insects; 
Of rain and running water; 
Of blue skies and the mysterious assemblage of distinct 

worlds. 
Mingled with all of these, melancholy and insistent, 
I hear the appeal of the children ; 
Robbed of all the beauty of the world 
Before ever they were called through the portal ; 
Beauty, infinite, everlasting, 
Ever-changing and eternally renewed. 
I know that I am one with this beauty, 
And my starved brother is one, 
For we, too, are of Nature. 

We are one with each other and with the raindrops, 
Diamonds threaded on the slender twigs. 
One with the bright-winged butterfly, new lighted on a 

rose, 
Slowly waving its wings of marvel. 
I am one and my defrauded brother is one 
With the fragrant peach which indolently sways 
On the cradling stem; the lance-headed peach-leaves 

which 
Seduce the air with aromatic passion. 
We are one with the rains which move stately 
Out of the hills and march across the valleys. 
Refreshing the earth with benevolence ; 
Or the snow of perfect whiteness. 
Hovering and protecting; covering and preserving, 
Like a fond nurse above her sleeping babes. 
Saying, "Hush." 
One with the grass, which with gentle fingers, 

88 



Weaves so graceful a carpet for our footsteps, 

So gracious a coverlet for our repose. 

I know that he, ill-fed, soul-starved, 

Grimed and mutilated. 

Is one, even as I am one. 

With the mountains which stand afar off 

And draw their veils about them. 

I rejoice in the great forests because they are part of me. 

As I shall be of them ; 

Sanctuaries of the gods, solemn and silent. 

In them the Centuries are sleeping. 

The arms of the Titans beckon the Winds to come to 

them, 
Enticing them from the ever-calling, never-sleeping Sea, 
Which, when Odysseus fought with it. 
Was even then older than Time. 
I know that I am one with all of these, and more. 
And my brothers are one with them, and more. 
And these, and more, are one with me and my brothers ; 
We are an universal whole. 
It is good to know our unity. 
It is good to believe that I, and all of these. 
Are of the same unity with the white sheep. 
Bleating soft and querulous upon the hillsides ; 
The thunder-voiced kine in the green meadows. 
Standing knee-deep in the marshes ; 
My loving dog who regards me insistently 
With faithful eyes, and my soft-furred cat 
Which whirrs the mysterious wheel of its content 
Upon my shoulder. 

It is good to believe that the men, the women 
And children we kill are our brothers, 
Our sisters, our children. 

TRUTH: 
Nature is part of Eternity. 

She knows not Time, She permits no ugliness. 
Not Morality, but Beauty, is her delight. 

89 



POET: 
I, too, am part of eternity. 
I and the blade of grass are a part of Nature. 
The beauty of the orchards is mine ; 
The orchards drooping heavy, like lovely ladies pregnant, 

expectant ; 
Plum-trees, pear-trees, cherry-trees, apple-trees, 
White brides, serene in the prophecy of fruit ; 
Giant oak-trees, monarchs of the years. 
Which have seized the Earth with their compelling roots 
As a lover seizes his beloved, 

And from their love have wrought a canopy of leaves ; 
The gray oaks, each a populous city 
With ants, squirrels, owls, hawks, woodpeckers. 
Finches and all the birds for citizens ; 
Balsamed and odorous pines which catch the breezes. 
Holding them for a moment, as satyrs hold nymphs ; 
Kissing them, releasing them, stamped with sweet odor ; 
Bright rivers and their lesser veins, the irrigation-ditches. 
Which stretch silver fingers into the Desert, 
Beckoning the tall poplars to stand beside them as 

sentinels. 
Patiently waiting for the King to come. 

TRUTH: 
The wonderful Mother is everlasting. 
Her soul is Beauty. 
She is beautiful in every part, 
The lesser as well as the greater. 

POET: 
The pebbles of the brook are jewels. 
The mountains are jewels, emerald, amethyst, sapphire. 
The wilderness of flowers are jewels from the Sun God's 

throat ; 
The stars, which shall remain when the Earth has ceased. 
Gemming the crown of Night ; 
The flowers which bloom for a moment that there may be 

fruit. 

go 



TRUTH: 
Beauty is not wasted ; though it endure but for a moment. 
The jewels of the night are eternal. 
Who beheld their lighting, or who will see their light 

grow dim? 
But they shall vanish even as the flowers vanish. 
The loveliness of the flowers is as eternal as the stars. 
When shall it pass away? 

POET: 
I have sought to commune with the stars, 
But they will not answer. 

Yet they seem to me not so eternal as I, myself. 
And not so beautiful as mine own longings. 

TRUTH: 
Is there any flaw in the beauty of Nature, 
Or any w^art upon her excellence? 

POET: 
I know not at what time. 

For Nature regards not the clock of the heavens, 
And keeps no calendar, 

But I know she will not scatter all this wonder abroad. 
Out of her treasure-house, in vain. 

And endure the ugliness with which Man has befouled 
her. 

TRUTH: 
Shall her child destroy her house of eternity, 
Or shall he pass into oblivion and the palace of ecstasy 
remain? 

POET: 
How infinite are the riches of the palace of light. 
Not only the over-arching skies, the wide-spreading seas 
And the engirdling mountains. 
But the carefully painted wild-cat, 
The striped skunk, the spotted fawn, kittens and puppies, 

91 



And all soft, helpless things; 

Butterflies, those winged flowers. 

Dainty humming-birds, jewels of the air, 

Green beetles, with emerald backs ; 

Coral lady-bugs, enameled with black spots, 

Carefully touched by the artist ; 

The pigeon's neck, the pheasant's breast; 

The jay-bird's wing ; the blackbird's back ; 

A baby's foot ; the shells which have caught the dyes of 

the sunset ; 
Leaves, blossoms, flowers, clouds, skies, stars ; 
The illimitable sunrise and sunset, 
And. also, those illimitable jewels which 
The sparkling fingers of the Frost hang upon the wintry 

boughs. 

TRUTH: 
The Universe as much within a dew-drop 
As within the orbed stars. 

POET: 

Words cannot declare the beauty of the sky 
By day and by night, 

Or the constellations which cover the night with their 
patterns. 

TRUTH: 
Beneath them, man slays the soul of his brother. 
And strangles the babes in their cradles. 



XVIII. 
POET: 

The infinite Mystery has begotten us; indolently, 

negligently. 
We are no more than the germ of the gnat or the beetle. 
With the moth and the fly we are equal, 
Man is but a part, yet unto himself he is the whole. 

92 



He fulfills his destiny not at all, 

Except as he follows the patient Mystery which has 
begotten him. 

TRUTH: 
He works as a mole in a dark tunnel, 
Without eyes to see the light. 
He grovels before his own tyrants, 
And applauds his own oppressors. 
He has suffered them to make a mocking of the infinite 

abundance. 
He has not made the earth, 
Nor the smallest particle of her ; 
Yet he denies her to her own children. 

POET: 
To inventory the abundance of Nature is to sparkle water 

before the eyes of those dying of thirst. 
How bitter it is to those who starve 
To know that the fields are bountiful 
As the breasts of a young mother ; 
Wheat-fields, golden, and oat-fields, silvern; 
Fields of bearded barley, like a phalanx of warriors 

moving forward; 
The tall rye which waves in the summer wind, 
Billows of plenty ; 

Fields of bannered maize, rustling their ribbons ; 
Plumed as an army of captains, proud in their bravery ; 
Generous grain-fields of every sort. 
Which are like stately women, flushed of the sun ; 
Their hair blown by the wind. 
Swaying, undulant, bearing golden vessels, 
Full and overflowing. 

TRUTH: 
Does a mother bear a child 
And have no milk in her breasts? 

93 



POET: 
Consider, also, the rewarding orchards, 
Bearing burdens and incense ; 
Royal companies of plums, pears, apples, apricots and 

cherries. 
Ranks of prunes, figs, oranges and lemons ; 
Luscious peaches, with sun-burned cheeks, 
As of blushing maidens who look modestly downward ; 
Peach-orchards which perfume the September breeze ; 
Vineyards, arbored and festooned, 
Where the wild doves crouch upon the ground 
In the shade of the vine-leaves ; 
Vineyards in serried ranks on the steep hillsides, 
Sloping toward the South ; 
The grotesque, gnarled and twisted vines, 
Bringing wine from Earth's cool caverns 
To rejoice the hearts of men ; 
Grapes in ruby, amber and purple bunches, 
Sweet and nectared, filling the air with a delicacy of musk ; 
The wide-spreading nut-trees, walnuts and chestnuts. 
Casting heavy shade in midsummer; 
Almonds, which are cousins to the peach-trees. 
Both from Persia, the country of Omar, Sadi, 
Hafiz and Firdausi ; 

Green almonds, white and sweet as milk. 
How aromatic the crushed peach-leaves smell, 
And the almond-leaves, dying, give forth spice. 
The tall pecans in the rich river-bottoms ; 
The wide-spreading chestnuts; 
The hickory-trees with shining, pungent leaves, 
Flakes of gold in the Autumn. 
Prodigal abundance, generous overflowing. 

TRUTH: 
Does a mother bear children and refuse to suckle them? 
Or having children, does she fail to fold them to her 
bosom? 

94 



POET: 

Not only the fields which laugh before us, 

But also the gardens, which are exquisite. 

Red beets, with purple leaves, blood-veined ; 

Golden carrots, with green plumes ; 

Stout cabbages, blue-green, as if silvered with a frost 

Winter had forgotten. 
Groping beans, which quickly clamber to the utmost top. 
Those ropes by which the valiant Jack 
Climbed from earth to clouds. 
As so would I ; 

White-blossomed peas, and the young peas 
vSugary in the cradle-pod ; 
Tomato-vines, hung with scarlet fruit, 
And the countless gifts which are born 
In the dark, mysterious earth. 
Potatoes, turnips, onions, and the parsnip 
Which once was the deadly hemlock that slew Socrates. 

TRUTH: 
Nay, not the hemlock slew him, 
But the men he would have saved. 

POET: 
Yet now it has become wholesome. 

TRUTH: 
The poison of yesterday, the food of tomorrow. 
Wrong ever changing into right and right to wrong. 

POET: 
The purple-globed egg-plant from Arabia, 
And luscious melons from the Persians ; 
Melons of Nusrabad and Casaba ; 
Water-melons, chrysoprase-casks of nectar. 
What marvel that it is stored through so small a pipe. 

TRUTH: 
The humblest stem may be conduit to the waters of Life. 

95 



POET: 

Consider the lowly grasses 

Which feed the flocks upon the hills 

And pour loaves exhaustlessly from the fields of the 

valleys ; 
And those cunning chemists, all the clover-tribe, 
Lading the air of June with sweets, 
Distilling honey for the bees. 
And from the air recovering to unwearied Earth her 

nitrogen. 

TRUTH: 
O circle of fertility complete. 
The endless cycles. 

POET: 
So must Life endless be, as if not yet begun. 



XIX. 

POET: 
Sorrow is beloved of the eternities. 
Her watch-tower is the very pinnacle of the mountains. 
She sees the hut of the fisher-man, 
Nestled in the cleft of rocks, just beyond the edge of 

foam. 
She sees on a hill-top the palace of him who has sucked 

the life of the workers. 
Her eyes are sad as the moon when it has fallen, 
But her lips are firm as the lips of a wrestler. 
She is the great sculptor, fashioning the soul to form. 
The stroking of her hand gives us strength ; 
And she moulds us unto beauty. 

TRUTH: 
She holds Knowledge between her knees. 
As a child between the knees of his mother. 



96 



POET: 

I have crept to her feet and she has lifted me up ; 
She would not comfort me, but she has lifted me up. 

TRUTH: 
Sorrow is the great champion. 

POET: 
She leads us down into purple depths, 
Whence, turning suddenly, we see 
The heights, touched with sunrise. 

TRUTH: 
Sorrow is a great goddess, brooding. 
But Misery, begotten of Man, shivers in rags. 

POET: 
Death, the eternal sorrow. 

TRUTH: 
Sorrow, the eternal aggrandizer. The strength of the 

world. 
But to have lived and never to have lived is indeed death. 

POET: 

If we have lived. Death is but a pause in the great 
harmony. 

TRUTH: 
Chanted upon the silver strings of the stars. 

POET: 

If Man has cheated his brother of the life-throb 

He has broken the harmony ; 

And Death is made the sneer of God. 

TRUTH: 
Nature knows no sneer. 

Always she is honest ; merciful ; merciless ; beautiful ; free. 
She brings either the joy of Life, 
Or the mercy of Death. 
She abhors Misery, but cherishes Sorrow. 

97 



POET: 
She insists that Death is a shining part of her unbroken 
circle. 

TRUTH: 
Death, warder to the cloudy gate of Time, 
The portal of Eternity. 
The Sun is its watchman. 
The Stars are its sentinels. 
Its hinges are the slow-turning ages. 

POET: 
The perfect portal to the path endless, 
Through which comes the Future. 
She is shod with the golden sandals of Delight 
And robed in garments of the morning skies ; 
Bearing on her strong right arm a baby, laughing. 

TRUTH: 
Death, master of the gateway, opening the portal. 
Benevolent Death ; chaste ; just ; not to be feared. 

POET: 
He holds a crystal cup, dripping rainbows. 

TRUTH: 
But with your own hand you have pushed back the 

rainbow cup. 
You have given Death a withered bough. 
Blighted before fruit. 

POET: 
Death is the keeper of the Halls of Immortality. 
Whomsoever he leads into the Gardens of Memory 
Wanders not abroad any more. 

TRUTH: 
Death, whose daughter is Memory, 
Keeper of the sacred silences 
Where no air from the world stirs. 
Nor is any change. 

98 



POET: 
Who can consider that the Sun must die, 
Yet speak of immortality ? 

TRUTH: 
Nevertheless, Man has his immortality, 
As the seed of grass its immortality ; 
The old forever sinking that the new may arise. 

POET: 
My life is a look into a wondrous garden 
As I pass a narrow casement. 
Then Death, like a kindly seneschal, closes the window. 

TRUTH: 
Death ever present, ever feared ; never accepted. 

POET: 

Terminator of joys and separator of companions. 

TRUTH: 
Separation is sorrow, but Death's bitterness 
Is the denial of Life. 

If Life be lived, then is Death the perfection of Life, 
And Life the perfection of Death. 

POET: 
Death, the silent friend who leads us to rest, 
As at evening a little child is called home by its mother. 

TRUTH: 
To the dreamless sleep. 
Oh, who should fear an unmolested sleep, 
Where the wind runs through the grass. 
And the flowers softly bow their heads 
In melancholy contemplation of their own loveliness? 

POET: 
Who would stop the wheel of endless Beneficence 
And undiminished Wonder? 

99 



TRUTH: 
When the tree has full-fruited, 

Blessing itself bountifully with the beads of its delight, 
Shall we deny the falling of its leaves? 

POET: 

But the pathetic millions are denied any ripeness of age. 
They know not its sunset meditation, nor the serene 
reverie of the dusk. 

TRUTH: 
Immaculate Death made falsity. 

POET: 
Supreme artist; unexcelled designer; leveler, destroyer, 

creator. 
I have stood by the death-bed of mothers. 
Moreover, I have watched the mysterious veil 
Fall over the face of a child. 
I have seen strong men shot in battle 
And in the brawl of mining-camps. 
Or the gambling-room ; brave men and cowards ; 
Men who seemed to me mean and unworthy. 
Yet never have I seen the invisible Sculptor 
Fail to mould dignity and confer peace. 
The sublimity of the Great Artificer is infinite ; 
Of the same passionless bigness as the stars, or the earth, 

or trees. 

TRUTH: 
The dying of the Poor is more pitiful than death ; 
Squalid rooms, foul air ; dirt and rags ; 
Wailings that the bread-winner is taken, 
Or whining and sniffling with a secret gladness 
That a burden has been lifted ; 
Candles, masses ; funerals ; superstitions ; 
The cost of food paid unto the dead ; 

The price of bread for a pine-box, covered and bedizened. 
How serene is the one within the box. 
Contemptuous of its tawdry trappings. 

100 



POET: 
Can we not, also, partake of Death's dignity? 

TRUTH: 
As chickens run about, bewildered, ^ 
Frightened by the shadow of an eagle ; 
So the poor are distracted by the overhanging pall of 

Death. 
At the foot of the paltry pallet of the Poor 
Sits an ugly monster, mowing and grimacing. 
Holding up to the dying, a pauper's coffin. 
They possess not themselves, even in death. 

POET: 
But the wild men of this wilderness 
Take Death by the hand as they take Life by the hand, 
Without mouthing, or vain conceit. 
They chant their sorrow a little while, 
Drumming upon the hollow-sounding parchment, 
Stretched upon a hoop, to fright away evil ; 
Then they pile stones above the sleeper, 
And pass on into the secret places of the Desert. 

I have stood with the soldiers. 
Face to face with the great Mother, 
And have wrapped the dead in their blankets. 
For the long repose. 
The Dawn was our celebrant; 
The larks, our choir ; 
The mists of the Morning, incense. 
We left them to their slumber. 

These return unto the mother simply as the fall of a tree, 
but the burials of civilization are ugly. 

TRUTH: 
What of fire, firstling of Creation? 
Type of the soul ; 
The great purifier ; 
Not devouring, but transmuting. 

lOI 



POET: 
So that with our own hands we may scatter 
The beloved ashes upon the spot of our communion, 
Giving them to the eternal Waste, 
Or to the swift-running heralds of the air. 

TRUTH: 
If you would but let her. 

How tenderly would Nature withdraw each one of you 
Toward her chamber of silence. 
Death is her supremest perfection; her most excellent 

kindness ; 
Nurse unto her children. 
Even the ant is not forgotten. 

POET: 

Death, 

Beautiful as Birth ; harmony inseparable ; awful majesty. 

I await you. I salute you. 

Your face is inscrutable. 

But I know you are a goodly messenger. 

You hold open the portal of Mystery. 

Through you, oh inexorable and compelling one, 

I, too, shall salute the Future. 

XX. 

POET: 
Between these two immensities, under the infinite arches. 
Death seems only the deeper note in the song eternal. 
The death of Man not more than the death of this little 

horned-toad. 
Whose dry husk I toss with my foot. 
Here lie the empty shells of cows, withered in the sun ; 
The skulls and ribs of horses, 
A pile of stones above a man's grave. 
For, to Man, dead bones are sacred, though not the living 

flesh. 
Even the toiler, dead, is respected for a moment. 

102 



TRUTH: 
The crown of Death is majesty ; 
Forgetfulness his tender benediction. 

POET: 
I was a soldier and have gone out to kill and be killed. 

TRUTH: 
This was not majestic. 

POET: 
The command of the State. 

TRUTH: 
Politicians in power. 

POET: 
Just over there where yon purple peak, 
Like a great amethyst, gems the brow of the Desert, 
I sprawled flat in the bunch-grass, a target 
For those Indians, betrayed by this thing we call the 
State. 

TRUTH: 
Authority. 

POET: 
Even the little gray gophers sat erect and laughed at me. 
In that silent hour before the dawn. 
When Nature drowses for a moment, 
We swept, like fire, over the smoke-browned tee-pees, 

whose conical tops 
Peeped above the willows, which unconcerned, 
Whispered to the coquetting of the wind. 
We frightened the air with crackle of rifles, women's 

shrieks, children's screams, shrill yells of savages. 
Hoarse curses of Christians. 
The rifles chuckled continually; 
A poor people, who asked nothing but freedom, butchered 

in the dark. 

103 



POET: 
But the dawn would not linger, nor the slow-advancing 

day refuse to come ; 
The heartless larks saluted the morn, as if there had been 

no murder. 
In the accusing light of the remorseless Sun 
It was not good to see the brown boys and girls lying 

about the grass in reckless repose ; 
On their sides, as if overcome with weariness; 
On their backs, their arms thrown out carelessly. 
Or drawn over their eyes, as if to shut out the light. 
It was not good to see the fearful gate-way 
In the just-budding maiden bosom, 
Whence startled Life had leaped to search the void, 
And chubby babies, sleeping, with a blue bullet-hole 
In the innocent breast, the soft little belly. 
Mothers whose bosoms ran blood with the milk. 
They lay quiet, in great dignity ; 
Their eyes staring at us, indifferent ; almost contemptuous. 

TRUTH: 
This was not the death ordered by the great Mother. 
Peaceful, beautiful, somnolent, serene ; 
This was the crystal vessel broken and the red wine 
spilled. 

XXI. 
POET: 

Hark! 

TRUTH: 
The Devil, laughing. 

POET: 

Laughter from Hell. 

It chuckles above the scream of shrapnel, the shrill of 
bullets, roar of shells, rattle of rifles, crackle of machine- 
guns and bellow of the great siege-cannon. 

104 



TRUTH: 
The Devil laughs that the people are butchered for power 
and boundaries. 

POET: 
War. 
A writhing scorpion stinging itself to death. 

TRUTH: 
War. 
The Soul biting itself to its own destruction. 

POET: 
I hear the sobbing of a great wind. 

TRUTH: 
The sighs of orphans. 

POET: 
I hear the faint, soft hiss of rain on summer leaves. 

TRUTH: 
Women's tears. 

POET: 
I hear the hollow groaning of a drum, 

TRUTH: 
War beating his gorilla chest with bloody fists. 
The people hasten to die, thirsting for a draught from the 
black river. 

POET: 
To die for the masters. 

TRUTH: 
Knowing not why, and having no quarrel. 

POET: 
They are frenzied with syllables, 
"Loyalty," "Fatherland," "Patriotism." 

105 



TRUTH: 
There is but one Fatherland, I 

The homes of the peoples of the world. 
But one virtue, disobedience. 
But one loyalty, each to his own soul. 
All wars are from Rulers for the gain of the Masters. 

POET: 
The Rulers are bitten with an adder, 
And the people die. 

TRUTH: 
The Oppressors fiddle and the people dance. 

POET: 
A dance of Death. 

TRUTH: 
The Bellied God snarls. 
And the mothers feed him the wages of their agony. 

POET: 
I hear the Idolaters saying, 
"Oh, God of Gold, God of Battles, 
"We will feed thee the young men carefully chosen, 

without blemish ; 
"We will lay upon thy altar the future generations ; 
"Though they be the poets of the world." 

TRUTH: 
The gowned men, like rock ravens black upon a carcass. 
Croak : "Oh, God of Love, give us victory over our foes. 
"Strengthen our hands 

"So that we may make the most widows and orphans. 
"For Christ's sake." 

POET: 
The Black Angel is riding. 
His coursers are thick in the air. 
I hear the whirl of the chariot wheels. 
And I see the flashing manes of his steeds as 

io6 



They neigh for drink. 

The river they drink from is red. 

The Devil spins the bullets hot upon their errand, 

And they whine to be cooled in flesh. 

The fierce shells sob for joy of their deliverance 

And the eager shrapnel scream with the ecstasy 

That their waiting is ended ; 

They are released for their feeding. 

Men buzz forward in black streams, like flies about a 

a shambles. 
They stumble ; toss their arms and fall aimlessly about, 

forgetting the world. 
The automatons, afar off, turning the cranks of the 

machine-guns. 
See not the flies they destroy. Those who stumble into 

the ditch of eternity see not who slew them. 

TRUTH: 
The young men winnowed and carefully selected. 

POET: 
As grain, heavy with ripeness, is beaten down by hail. 
So the fields of young men are beaten down and the 
Future is made barren. 

TRUTH: 
There is no folly without fools. 

POET: 
It is the Devil's playground. 

I see his distorted legions hopping gleefully about ; 
They snatch at the breath of the dying 
And weave it into a blue and shuddering mist. 
They dance above the bloody chaos. 
They tear out arms and legs and twist them about ; 
Laughing at the shrieks of the tortured. 
They fiddle a mad dance upon the exquisite nerves. 
And make a chorus of the screams of agony. 

107 



They smash the silver-threaded spine, mysterious life- 
cord, and chuckle at the distortions of face. 

They are whimsical. 

They seize a head here; half a head there, showing the 
curious brain. They are not nice in their mocking. 

They tear away the lower jaw, 

Leaving the tongue to dangle foolishly on the bloody 
breast ; 

The crazy eyes, wildly rolling, trying to speak. 

They break the windows which look out upon the 
Universe 

And leave bloody pits of darkness. They annihilate 
fatherhood. 

A wretch tries to crawl away in blind agony. 

Like a wounded snake, but they tether him with his own 
bowels. They are obscene. 

TRUTH: 
Nature will make excellent manure out of 
Fathers ; sons ; brothers ; poets, and musicians ; 
Men having gifts for the ages. 
O Governments ; O Fatherland ; O Patriotism. 

POET: 
The healing breath of the ground is tainted. 
And the air is sick with the salt, sweet smell of blood. 

TRUTH: 
The Earth will drink it up, knowing its value. 
She will glut herself, knowing its richness. 
The lowly weeds shall flourish out of the lips of lovers. 
And grass shall grow strong out of the hearts of fathers. 

POET: 
A thrush sings from a poplar torn with shells. 

TRUTH: 
Nature, contemptuous. 
Whistles a tune, at the edge of the battle-field. 

io8 



POET: 
The Devil is satirical. 
He amuses himself with field-hospitals 
Where the white-gowned surgeons, 
Red to the neck, like butchers. 

Cut feverishly the flesh, which is cheaper than veal, 
Drinking brandy for strength to meet the truckloads of 

bloody mutilations. 
Here is the Devil's toy-shop 
Where he whittles, for his amusement ; 
Cripples; monstrosities; misshapen deformities; toys for 

his playthings ; 
Grotesques for his laughter. 
The grass and the leaves 
Shiver at the screams of torment ; 
But when the benevolent Night approaches, 
And the Moon rides upon the dusk, 
The Battle slumbers, snoring fitfully. 
The dying have time to die. 
Toward the grey dawn the long, dull moans grow 

rhythmically weaker, as a lullaby which is ended. 

TRUTH: 
But who shall hush the moans of the mothers who rock 
to and fro, crying, "Was it for this our travail?" 

POET: 
Glow-worms sprinkle the land thickly like dull stars. 

TRUTH: 
Candles lighted for the dead. 

POET: 
Here are two, their hands almost touching. 
Their blood has run together in a little pool. 
It is of one redness. 
Slav and Saxon, it mingles beyond distinction. 

log 



TRUTH: 
As in death, so in life, except for the Rulers. 
Power, Profit, the war breeders. 

POET: 
The dead hug each other closely in the trenches, as 
brothers. 

TRUTH: 
The living pause awhile, like good farmers, 
To harvest their crop ; 

Carting the carrion heaps to the festering trenches, 
And peasants, in rags, are made to dig the graves 
Of peasants in the monkey-garments of the Rulers, 
Flies buzz up angrily from the staring eyes and open 

mouths 
As the earth is shoveled in. 
The very air turns sick of the stench. The mangled bodies 

are piled thick 
Into pits of putrefaction. 

POET: 
There lie Music, Poetry, Art, Invention ; Wisdom, Knowl- 
edge, Beauty, Hope and Love. 

TRUTH: 
Civilization. 

POET: 
I hear a lark, singing from the sky ; 
And the trill of a blackbird in the rushes by the river. 
I see a troop of wild ducks flying over the marsh 
Whose water is red. All Nature is indifferent, though 
The wounded shriek, and their agony is as the groans of a 
tempest. 

TRUTH: 
Should Nature despair because of Man's folly? 
Shall the birds cease to know joy, because the peoples tear 
each other's throats at the behest of the governors? 

no 



POET: 
Here is a boy, his white face beautiful as a girl's, 
And on his pale forehead, caressing the long black hair, 
As a mother might, is the hand of his enemy. 
His mother waits, for him, alone ; and she a widow ; 
And for the other, in a vine-covered cottage, 
Waits a woman, his baby at her breast, singing : 
"Hush-a-by, baby; Daddy will come. 
"When the war's over, Daddy will come." 

TRUTH: 
The Devil, like a gross monster which has littered. 
Now leads his brood from the bloody desolation ; 
They follow after him, thick as ants ; 
They swarm over the land like crickets, and hobble like 

broken grasshoppers. 
Cripples; beggars; drunkards; looters; burners; thieves. 
War, 
Monster begotten of the giant Greed upon the whore 

Patriotism. 

POET: 
War, an obscene beast, world-large, 
Hiding in the darkest abysses of the primal savagery. 
Till a man with a red ribbon across his breast 
Waves a sceptre, like a mischievous monkey ; 
Then the sea heaves, the earth trembles and the monster 
Rises, dripping blood. 

TRUTH: 
Patriotism. Power. Profit. 

POET: 
War 

Stalks up and down the earth in an iron helmet, 
Which is Hate ; 

With an iron spear, which is Cruelty ; 
Brandishing an iron sword, which is Revenge. 
The breath of his nostrils is greed ; his pastime is murder, 
his wine is blood. 

Ill 



He plants his armed feet on the lips of babes 

And the soft breasts of women. 

He tears the young men furiously, 

And kneads their flesh as dough. 

He squeezes their blood, 

So that it runs swift from the presses. 

The fields lie barren and the chimneys are without smoke. 

White-footed Day steals over the mountains 

And shakes the defiant lances of his coming against the 

sky. 
Evening draws her crimson veil about her ankles 
And steps down into the flowing purple. 
There is silence as the stillness of Death. 
Sparrows nest in a skull in a field which has been plowed 

with shells, and watered with blood. 
The little brook has washed itself clean 
And babbles of Death. 
A wren, scarce larger than a bullet. 
Has builded in the chimney of a fallen cottage. 
Nature sits in her temple, indifferent ; 
Weaving, ceaselessly, the filaments of Beauty. 

TRUTH: 
Like a great harpy War has come between the sun and the 

grass 
And has darkened the earth with his shadow. 
He devours greedily the souls of men. 
He tears the subtle spinnings of Peace. 
Great cities are his torches. 

And Man lies upon the wasted earth, face downward, 
A mourner. 

XXII. 
TRUTH: 
Turmoil, fret, strife, eager, cruel, relentless: Civilization. 
The din of factories and roar of furnaces ; 
The continuous rumble of trains ; 
Rattle of cars and trucks ; 

112 



Dominant shriek of whistles, 

And the great, incessant avalanche of many noises ; 

The scream of the forest giants when, 

Torn from their mossy hiding. 

They are laid on the carriage 

And the great saws disembowel them. 

The deafening hammering of the ship-yards. 

The clamor of hammers upon anvils. 

And from the sky-piercing buildings 

The reverberant roll of the riveter. 

The hoarse, strident calls of the cities ; 

Shouts, cries, groans and curses. 

POET: 
Behold how Nature in her elusive mantle. 
More hushed than Night, soft-trailing as the clouds, 
Goes, like a mother, to her perfect work. 
Gentle as sleep ; more comforting than death. 
She lifts the sea unto the mountain-tops, without a sound. 
And pours continually the everlasting urns. 
The rivers murmur as gods that dream. 
And the benignant mountains guard their slumber. 
Their heads are pillowed on Eternity, 
Their never-sleeping voices are soothing. 
Silence is the cloak to Beauty. 
Behold, also, the rain, the very wine of days. 
How noiselessly it seeks the slender roots, 
As a bride creepeth to her love ; 
And who has ever heard a cry or noise 
From the frail and thready roots which uplift the trees, 
Garnish the Earth with grass and spread abroad the 

blazonry of flowers? 
The frail roots whose delicate fingers distill Earth's 

miracle 
Of nectared fruits and never make a sound. 
Man's condition is clamor, din and noise, 
But Nature has laid her finger on her lips ; 

"3 



Night and day she teaches that Beauty is her state, 
Silence her delight and Freedom her condition. 

TRUTH: 
Between her hands are Peace ; Righteousness ; Freedom ; 

Justice; Silence; 
And from these come Calm, Living Soul and the Perfect 

Race. 

POET: 
After Man has shouted his cries and fretted the air with 

his clamor, 
Lo, he lies down, also, to the great silence. 
And is gathered up again by the patient roots 
Into eternal beauty. 



XXIII. 
POET: 
I sought God in the caverns of the ages, 
But they were empty. 
I pushed aside the tapestries of the Night 
And rudely tore down the star-sown arras of the years. 
But found only desolation. 

I loosed my soul upon the backward path of Eternity, 
But it was lost in the mists, 
And I was frightened by the silence. 
I stood upon the purple peaks 
And sought to pierce the clouds of Being, 
But was dizzy with the infinite. 
I called into the impenetrable vacancy. 
And was not answered. 
No voice I heard ; I saw no hand ; no face. 
My soul rent the veil before the sanctuary of the clouds 
And rushed in with the rebellious lightning, 
But there was nothing. 

I shod my spirit with the winged slippers of the Wind, 
And pried curiously into every corner. 

114 



All was emptiness and a great stillness. 

I seized the Sun by his burning tresses and questioned 

him, 
But he was without knowledge. 
I clung to the chariot-wheels of the Stars 
But was flung back to earth ; and they passed on. 
Then I knew there was no God. 

TRUTH: 
A slender thread of smoke from a dead fire which you 
yourself have made. 

POET: 
I, myself, am God and a maker of gods. 
To be myself the only godhood. 
To bud, to bloom, to fruit, and from the fruit a new 

growth. 
To express myself fully, absolutely, cruelly ; 
Or I have been a dead thing. 
To be myself, or I have prevented God-birth; 
And denied the Supreme Goodness. 
Godhood is to exist. 
And the Supreme Godhood is to exist resolutely, to be 

excellently, myself. 
Unless I am determinedly myself, 
I have taken the supreme gift and belied it. 
I have broken the everlasting chain. 
And am a link that has failed. 
I will not weary the stars with prayers. 
But I will fill the world with myself, 
As the air encompasses the whole world, 
Or the fragrance of lilacs pervades the night. 

TRUTH: 
Taint not the air with incense. 
But go to the flowers and say : 
"Brothers, I, too, will insist on my own quality, 
"Even though it seems not sweet to others." 

"5 



The skunk-cabbage, golden and hopeful, in the dim forest 

swamp, 
Refuses not its life because its odor is not applauded ; 
It does not betray its part in eternity 
Because you do not approve. 

POET: 
Why should I, with fear-shaken hands, 
Supplicate the clouds. 
Or grovel, face-downward, in the grass. 
Who am myself the clouds, and more ; 
The grass, and more ; 
God, and more? 

I am offspring of Nature, the supremest God, 
And I, myself, am for myself her supremest part. 
Wresting from her supremacy my own god-head ; 
And interpreting to her the God which is to be. 
What to me is it that Nature, too. 
Must pass down the endless channel? 
For me, my own life is eternity. 
Though it be a short race between two pillars. 
Nevertheless, it is for me eternity. 
For me, it is the beginning and the end of Time. 
I must declare myself utterly, without mercy. 
Or I am nothing. I have lost my opportunity. 
My life a bubble of the sea, which is, and is gone. 

Yet I am not greater than others. 

Let each express himself relentlessly ; 

As the distorted oak and slender birch separately express 

themselves. 
Man continually evolving, changing, thirsting. 
Eager, curious; making Earth pregnant; 
Restlessly studying his soul, that there may be gods. 
Man to himself sufficient, exclusive, absorbing, complete ; 
All-important; a maker of gods. 
And I a worker in the toy-shop, 

ii6 



Seriously insisting that my toy also be gilded and 

appraised. 
By chance it, too, may be a god and ride upon the clouds. 
Or be whirled like a leaf for a little while. 

The stars have mocked me, but I have laughed back at 

them. 
What, because your lives are longer. 

Your beards are flame and your graves the exultant ether. 
Shall you mock me? 
Is not an end the end? 
Is not a life, life? 
Why do not you cover your scintillating brows and 

petulantly cast yourselves down into the infinite abyss. 
Because you, too, will come at last into the vault of 

darkness? 
Do you not, nevertheless, drive the fiery wheels of your 

wagons their appointed race ? 
And the butterfly, which has been so carefully painted, 
Daintily decorated with infinite solicitude, 
Does it refuse to blossom upon the air 
Because its destiny is but an hour? 
If its hour be sunny and it luxuriate in the heart of a 

holly-hock, 
Or if its hour be rainy and it lies broken in the roots of the 

grass. 
Nevertheless it has lived, and in the daintily-woven 

chrysalis of its caterpillar 
Will carefully hand on to the coming Summer 
The glad embroidery of its wings. 

Shall I despairingly cast myself face downward, 

Among the falling leaves, and cry out : 

"It is vain; it is vain?" 

Shall I betray life because, like the leaves, 

I shall, with alloted brevity, return to my duty? 

Are not they beautiful in death ? 

117 



They have expressed themselves ; they have done their 

part. 
Death, the infinite sea, which in its widest sweep touches 

the shore of Life. 
Does the sunset withhold its glories 
Because Night advances to swallow it? 
Or Night stay its wonder because it will pale to a new 

day? 
Shall Spring tear off her garlands and deny the overture 

of birds 
Because Summer comes quickly? 
Or Summer lie by the brook and sigh 
Because presently she dies? 
Or Autumn, like a sour churl, refuse his fruits 
Because Winter has a sword at his throat? 
Nay, because of Winter, he urges his abundance. 
And tramples the grapes busily in the wine-press. 
He is more prodigal of gifts because soon comes the 

barren silence. 

Death is Life in its fullest immensity. 

And shall I be rebellious because I make way for the new? 

I am not the whole, but a part of the whole ; 

There are stars beyond counting. 

Which, with far solicitude, overhang the Night. 

There are many blades of grass which nurse lowly upon 

the Earth. 
Each is of the whole and assumes not to say, 
"Behold me ! I am the only one." 
Yet each is determined desperately to be itself, 
As if there were none other; 
Resistlessly itself, that through it 
The infinite Past and the infinite Future may be united. 

If I be not myself remorselessly, 

I have despised the wonderful Past which made me, 

And betrayed the imprisoned Future 

Which holds up to me imploring hands. 

ii8 



If I suffer not my brother also to be himself 

I have rent the rich scarfs, embroidered by the fingers of 

the stars, 
And have invaded the cloisters of the ages in vain. 

I will not shroud my soul in black despair 

And wail piteously because I must stand alone 

Before the doors of Oblivion, 

And enter reluctantly, without guide and without 

companion. 
Why should I whine, like a lost dog, separated from its 

master? 
I know that I, too, am a sentinel imperious as Orion, 
And set upon my celestial watch. 
I can send my thought out to the Pleiades 
And feel the breath of Arcturus. 
I am a sentinel, heavy with obligation to the dead; and 

those to come. 
Pacing the star-built battlements of Eternity. 
I will be honorably relieved from my guard 
When the burden of the night is heavy 
And the Morning Star pales in the East. 

I know, for my allotted moment, I have been loosed 

Beneath the dome of an everylasting temple. 

I know there is joy everywhere, even as a clear spring 

hides amid the ferns of the forest. 
Or a dew-drop in the bell of the hyacinth ; 
Or a sparkling fountain which jets 
To the sonorous bass of the city. 
I know that the slow-moving streams 
Which press through the streets of the cities 
Ought to sing their cantata of joy. 
As well as the brooks which warble past 
The knees of the great fir trees. 

119 



TRUTH: 
Is a flower which blooms and is gone 
Less beautiful than the oak, which endures for a century? 
Joy and Beauty are the breath of Creation ; 
These are the reasons for the mystery of Life. 
These are the reasons for the mystery of Death. 
And who denies Beauty, denies the soul. 

POET: 
I have pushed aside the curtains of the universe 
And looked in ; and there. 
In a desolation never to be broken. 
Brooded my soul, in a great loneliness. 
I said to myself, "I will carve god-hood 
"Out of manhood ; 
"I will carve God out of myself." 



XXIV. 
POET: 
There is a mighty throbbing of the heart of the World. 
The old Mother quivers with a fearful pulsing. 

TRUTH: 
The birth throes. A new life is to be bom. 

POET: 
Broad as the front of the sea, rolling, heaving, advancing, 

I behold a grey and sullen multitude. 
Like the sea, it reaches restlessly beyond the sunrise and 
Steadily it rolls forward its crested might, overwhelming. 

TRUTH: 
Revolution. 

POET: 
The land shall be made clean, as meadows new-swept by 

the west wind. 
It will break in thunder on the shore, spreading purity. 

1 20 



TRUTH: 
Revolution. 

POET: 
Onward, ever onward, it comes resistless as the Tide of 

Time; men with pale faces; 
Women with despairful eyes, 
And little children who have never laughed. 
Dancing with the glee of demons, are their fluttering 

banners ; the rags of their poverty ; 
From mines, mills and factories ; 
From the slimy slums of cities ; 
From the dark and dangerous caverns of the earth ; 
From the narrow and dripping tunnels of darkness, come 

the rats of Civilization ; 
From the clamorous and devouring penitentiaries of 

Industry ; 
From the white-hot, roaring hells of furnaces ; 
From the mind-madding laughter of the machines. 
And the devouring cruelty of the pest-houses of Greed. 
Their banners grimace against the dawn, and the rags of 

their misery jump like little gray demons. 
Behind them, hobbling, grinning, leering. 
Scramble the misshapen spawn of the dens of degradation. 
As leaves upon the floor of the November forest. 
Thickly they cover the earth, and like the rustle of leaves 
Is their breathing. "Revolution. Revolution." 
Steady and ominous is the tramp of their feet, like the 

ponderous throb of an engine without a master. 

TRUTH: 
They are not going down into the pits. 
They are not marching to the factories. 
They are not going to the furnaces ; 
Nearer, more near ; stronger ; louder ; more strong ; 
They come, and the mutter of their lips is 
"Revolution. Revolution. Revolution." 

121 



POET: 
I am cold with the relentless insistence of their coming. 
I know they will not turn back, 
More than the relentless river turns not back ; 
Which bears furiously on its tossing front 
The mangled homes it has snatched for its eating. 
It giggles at the gurgle of those who sink. 

TRUTH: 
Revolution, Revolution. Revolution. 

POET: 
I know these will not turn back, more than the wave turns 

not back 
Which dashes the great ship upon the rocks 
And churns her bones savagely. 
They will not turn back more than the centuries 
Which are past turn not back. 
What is that which sits in the eyes of the imminent host? 

TRUTH: 
Death. 
They have accepted the challenge and are pressing 

forward to die. 
On their backs, like knapsacks bowing them over, is all 

the suffering of the centuries. 

POET: 
I see back of their endlessness, 
Like a cloud against the sky. 
The ghosts of all the martyrs of the ages ; 
The unimagined, patient Poor whose blood has welled up 
About the ankles of Oppression. 

TRUTH: 
Oh, Revolution, dark and brooding angel of the bloody 

deeps. 
Only ministrant who tenderly lifts up the bruised head ; 
Nurse who wipes the blood from the lips of rebels 
And gives them to drink of the running waters ; 

122 



Only helper, savior and preserver. 
The whiteness of your hands is gilt with crimson 
And your feet are the strong feet of a runner. 
Your head is crowned with a crown of thorns, 
And most precious drops drip down your pale and 
resolute face. 

POET: 
Oh, Revolution, dread angel of the Awful Presence, 
Warder at the gate of tears. 
Open and set the captive free. 
Dark, silent, loving, cruel and merciful one. 
Hold yourself not aloof. 
Is there not enough? 

You are our only hope, our only redeemer. 
Come, with thunder and with lightning. 
That the air may be clear. 
Come, with deluge and tempest, that the earth may be 

purified. 
Come, with agony and bloody rain, that Life may be born 

anew. 
The glad life of a perfect peace, and songs stirring the air. 
Pitch head-long from the cloudy battlements 
And, with heavenly fire, utterly destroy 
This distorted and mis-shapen world. 

TRUTH: 
Oh, blessed Revolution, born of the love for the 

generations. 
Oh, blessed Revolution, Giver of Life. 

POET: 
The victims of the God of Gold 
No longer march into his blood-dripping maw. 
Their faces are set toward Death. 
Their breasts are naked. 

They have beaten their hammers and saws into knives. 
Their eyes are fixed. They are willing to die. 

123 



TRUTH: 
Death is their drummer, drumming 
Upon the unknown graves of the oppressed. 

POET: 
At the front of the terrible army flaunt two great standards, 
Writhing, like giant dragons, above the sea of gray faces. 
On one is written, "Justice" ; 
On the other, "Freedom." 

TRUTH: 
They are written in blood. 



124 



OF THIS BOOK ONE THOUSAND COPIES HAVE BEEN 

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